Have Degree, Will Work for Peanuts

In an editorial in USA Today, Theda Skocpol and Katherine Swartz analyze the potential effects of the Affordable Care Act upon the phenomenon of employees remaining with companies that provide healthcare coverage--simply for continuation of coverage--which they call "job lock." Projections by the Congressional Budget Office indicate a loss of two and a half million full time equivalent jobs as people move into retirement, out of the work force, or into reduced work hours as the ACA becomes fully implemented and frees people from work-tied insurers. The authors cite existing medical conditions, personally or of a family member, as a major reason people maintain employment in such jobs. This of course leads to people working in fields that are not ideal, working rather than taking time to care for children and loved ones, or avoiding retirement simply to maintain insurance coverage. Under the ACA, Americans now have the option of pursuing reduced time at work without fear of being unable to maintain their healthcare. As a person who has personally sought out jobs based at least in part on healthcare packages, it is easy to see the benefit in freeing up people to seek fulfilling employment or a more amicable balance between family and work obligations, but still being able to see a doctor.

However, there are of course downsides to the relationship between the ACA and corporate America. Skocpol and Swartz make a good point about the restraints upon established workers, particularly those in the demographics most likely to have both aging parents and young children, as well as older workers who are approaching retirement. They ignore, however, the workers freshly entering the workforce, who are facing the other edge of the sword that is the ACA. Young people coming into the workforce are seeing fewer and fewer full-time opportunities as profit-driven corporate America seeks to reduce insurance overhead at the lowest ranks of employment. In 2012 John Schnatter, CEO of Papa John's Pizza caught a lot of heat for his vow to reduce hours for his workers as a way of absorbing the cost of the ACA's mandate to insure those working over 33 hours a week. Fox News criticizes the ACA for pushing people into part-time work as companies work to keep costs down. While the freedom to work fewer hours may indeed be a major benefit to a stable, salaried family with children or elderly relatives to care for, the push to keep hourly employees below the threshold of full-time to mitigate insurance hassles at the corporate level leaves the young struggling to make ends meet at jobs where there is incredible pressure to avoid not just overtime but even achievement of regular hours in the 30+/week range. People working in the service industry are particularly vulnerable, being forced to work two or three part time jobs in order to maintain the same standard of living that they could previously have had with one 40hr/week job, even if it did not provide full coverage for healthcare. This is particularly galling when you consider the statistics of how much use younger people even get out of insurance. The fact is healthy, younger workers are far more often in need of income to pay rent than they are of insurance to cover treatment of illness. But with more and more jobs being made part-time or on-call, simply living month-to-month becomes more pressing than the idea that one might miss a physical.

While Skopcol and Swartz and USA Today paint a rosy picture of the suburban mom able to make more PTA meetings and soccer games, and the 60 year old with chronic illness no longer shackled to a desk for five more years to maintain healthcare, it ignores the shaft being given to new workers trying to establish themselves. In an economy where underemployed college graduates are moving back in with mom and dad  as it is, can we afford to give corporate America carte blanche to force a generation of workers to depend on income from the new proliferation of part-time, on-call jobs? What stability is to be built in a job market that has people not only juggling job and family, and possibly school, but job, and job, and job, and family and school? And that 63-year-old entrepreneur no longer forced to forgo his small business dream so he can have insurance coverage? He's gonna have a lot less capital to invest in his new small business, with two part-time employed, degree holding, 30-somethings to feed, at home.