The "part-time America" myth gets shattered into pieces

[UrbScotty]

Like a bad summer-pop earworm, some economic ideas get stuck in our heads for no good reason and refuse to go away.

Take, for example, the remarkably durable myth that Obama has presided over a "part-time economy," where full-time work has been devastated by his relentlessly anti-capitalist policies. The Atlantic has done our best to bust this myth, but there's no killing some summer earworms, and so, like a particularly terrible Top 40 DJ, here comes Mort Zuckerman, spinning the old track on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page.

It's impossible to briefly sum up Zuckerman's argument—"The Full-Time Scandal of Part-Time America"—which is a collage of bad stats and randomly drawn lines of causality. The gist is that the U.S. economy only makes part-time jobs now, and Obamacare is hastening the demise of full-time work.

The easiest way to fact-check the claim that part-time work is rising is to measure Americans working part-time who want to work full time—i.e. "for economic reasons." It turns out that the entire increase in part-time employment happened before Obamacare became a law in 2010.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/heres-what-obamas-part-time-america-really-looks-like/374356/

[daleanime]

1. And how many went from 39/38 hours a week....

to 29/28?


ACA does some good, but we do ourselves, and everyone else, a disservice by ignoring the bad parts.

[1StrongBlackMan]

3. According to this widely read, ...

liberal rag's reporting on the BLS numbers ... not many.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2014/03/10/the-real-numbers-on-the-obamacare-effect-are-in-now-let-the-crow-eating-begin/

[daleanime]

7. Strange....

I know over 150 myself.

[abelenkpe]

2. Tell that to animation and VFX workers in Los Angeles

who have seen the majority of work off shored over the past two years and have been forced to either leave the industry, leave the city in pursuit of work or settle for short term contract positions. While I'm happy for others in more fortunate industries no report changes the reality of thousands of lost, once more secure positions in my field.

[FBaggins]

4. Whether it's a "myth" or not is yet to be determined.

Isn't the argument that employers are cutting back on full-time positions so that they don't have to pay for the benefit?

And wasn't that requirement postponed until a least next year?

The real test of this claim will come with much deeper analysis of the results a year or two after the rules change completely... and even then the analysis will have to take into account the fact that FT/PT shifts also occur due to economic cycles (and that ACA will have different impacts in this area depending on the extent to which employers within a given market were already providing healhcare covereage)

[obxhead]

5. last year I worked with only full time coworkers

This year 2/3 of our staff is part time with a juggled schedule. I never know who I'll be working with.

Was it the ACA? The few remaining full timers aren't sure, but it sucks. Productivity is down, and the finished result is inferior.

[awoke_in_2003]

6. Obama isn't hastening the demise of full-time work...

the people who hold the levers of power are doing that.