Some U.S. workers are ringing in the fifth anniversary of Obamacare by working fewer hours, according to a new survey.
A new survey by the Society of Human Resource Management released Tuesday found about 14 percent of businesses have reduced part-time hours and another 6 percent plan to do so. Employers are reducing hours to avoid Obamacare’s employer mandate, which requires companies to provide health insurance to all workers that work 30 or more hours a week.
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In addition, 5 percent of companies already reduced or plan to reduce the total number of employees.
The remainder of those surveyed chose not to reduce employee hours.
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The Society for Human Resource Management surveyed 743 human resources professionals from a variety of companies.
This year the law’s employer mandate went into effect for organizations with 100 or more full-time employees, requiring those companies to provide health insurance for 70 percent of their employees. That figure goes up to 95 percent in 2016 and all employees beyond that date.
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The small business part of the mandate, which affects business with 50-99 full-time employees, goes into effect in 2016.
A common criticism with the law is that companies will have to layoff workers or reduce full-time employees to part-time to avoid having to pay for health insurance.
If any business violates the mandate, they must pay a fee calculated by the number of employees who don’t have insurance. The Internal Revenue Service has said that a company could pay an excise tax of $100 a day per applicable employee.
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The survey found that 77 percent of companies faced higher healthcare plan costs this year compared to 2014 and 6 percent saw their costs decrease.
For that 77 percent, about 24 percent saw their costs go up 16 percent or more. Of the 6 percent that decreased costs, a majority decreased by up to 10 percent.
The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.
