Has “Obamacare” really led companies to cut back workers’ hours, as Marco Rubio said? Perhaps, but the effect has been very small. Virtually all of the employment growth during the recovery has been full-time; part-time employment is basically flat. But the so-called employer mandate, which requires most companies to offer health insurance to anyone working at least 30 hours a week, seems to have led employers to cut the hours of workers who are already near the 30-hour cutoff. A year ago, I estimated the cuts affected a few hundred thousand people, small in the context of millions of total jobs. But the people affected are disproportionately low-wage workers and women.
