WASHINGTON – At Ken Adam’s
10 Subway restaurants in Michigan, the face of his workforce is changing to
more part-time employees. Since May, he’s brought on around 25 part-time
workers, while reducing hours for some employees — all because of the coming
full enforcement of the Affordable Care Act, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The good news is that
restaurants and bars have been hiring more workers, but some economists see the
uptick in seasonal and/or part-time workers as troubling. Overall, the hospitality
and leisure industry has added more employees than any other sector last month,
according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
“I'd be surprised if the
Affordable Care Act didn't have something to do with” the increase in hiring
part-time workers, said Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics.
“Companies don't want to pay for health care unnecessarily if they can avoid
it, so they'll try to avoid it.” But he cautioned that the effects “will be
harder to discern in the data.”
Over the whole U.S.
workforce, companies have hired more part-time employees so far in 2013 than
full-time workers. Last year, employers brought on more full-time workers.
Earlier in July, the Obama administration said companies not meeting the new
health insurance mandates would have a year’s reprieve from paying penalties.
However, restaurateurs who
have started moving toward more part-timers indicate that they will stick to
that strategy. “Since passage of the ACA, we've increased the number of our
part-time employees, although we haven't fired people to do so,” said Andy
Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants Inc., which runs Hardee’s and Carl’s J.