The Homa Files

You read that right.

The obvious has become evident to me …

The BLS reported that employment rose by 165,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.5 percent,

Hmmm.

Memory jogged back to last week’s post re: the increasing number of part-timers:

Obvious question: how many of the 165,000 were part-timers?

According to the Fed’s data base, part-time employment increased by 229,000.

If true, that means that full-time employment dropped.

Hmmm again.

What’s going on?

A couple of more clues:

First, many reports pointed out that manufacturing jobs were flat and construction jobs dropped.

OK, that makes sense.

Then, I heard an interview with a small restaurant owner that added the missing piece.

Here’s a summary of the interview:

Louie – owner of Louie’s Restaurant – is freaked by the the cost impacts of ObamaCare.

So, Louie is cutting workers’ hours to under 30 hours so that the get classified as part-timers … and not subject to the ObamaCare mandates.

How does Louie take care of his customers?

Simple.

Betty and Sally used to work 40 hours … total of 80.

Betty and Sally get their hours cut to 30 each … total of 60.

Louie hires Mary … and schedules her for 20 hours per week.

Bingo.

Louie still employs 80 hours of labor … and ducks the ObamaCare mandates … he’s happy.

Mary gets a job … she’s happy.

Employment goes up … unemployment goes down … Team Obama does a victory dance.

What about Betty and Sally?

Oh yeah.

They got screwed … and don’t think the economy us doing that well.

The obvious is now evident.

ObamaCare adds jobs.

Covert 2 full-timers to part-timers … and add a part-timer.

Nice economic plan …

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This entry was posted on May 6, 2013 at 6:58 am and is filed under BLS, Employment - Jobs, ObamaCare, Unemployment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.