Employment: The latest jobless claims report was more of the same bad news. So what's the root of this seemingly intractable problem? There's a compelling argument that the trouble is being caused by ObamaCare.
New claims for unemployment benefits rose by 10,000 to 418,000 — the 15th straight period that the total has exceeded 400,000.
If that figure seems familiar for some other reason, recall that it was part of the promise then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi made during the ObamaCare debate. "It's about jobs," Pelosi said in February 2010 of ObamaCare. "In its life, it will create 4 million jobs — 400,000 jobs almost immediately."
So how's that working out so far, Rep. Pelosi?
The economy has been in recovery since the recession ended in June 2009, five months after President Obama took office. Yet the jobless rate is 9.2%, up from 7.6% on the day of his inauguration. Private-sector jobs have fallen by 2 million. Last year's "Recovery Summer" has turned into the year of the mass layoff.
Bottom line: Job creation outside of government has been abysmal.
It hasn't always been that way. In the early postrecession months job creation moved along at the normal rate. But the job market stumbled and fell in May 2010, a little more than month after Obama signed his health care legislation into law.
From January 2009, the month of Obama's inauguration, to April 2010, an average of 67,600 private-sector jobs were created on a monthly basis. That April, the private sector added 229,000 net jobs. But the following month, it added only 48,000 jobs. Since then, the average number of private-sector jobs added each month is an anemic 6,500.
Coincidence?
Not according to a new report from the Heritage Foundation. The jobs collapse "suggests that businesses are not exaggerating when they tell pollsters that the new health care law is holding back hiring," writes James Sherk in the Heritage Web Memo "Economic Recovery Stalled After ObamaCare Passed."
Sherk says the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act discourages hiring in a number of ways:
• Its provisions give businesses that have fewer than 50 workers "a strong incentive to maintain this size." Doing so "allows them to avoid the mandate to provide government-approved health coverage or face a penalty."
• Employers with more than 50 workers are facing rising health care costs because they have to buy more costly government-approved insurance or pay a penalty. Adding to their work force becomes more expensive than it would have been otherwise.
• Businesses are up against significant uncertainty about what is considered "qualifying health coverage" and what that coverage will cost.
"They also do not know what the health care market or their health care costs will look like in four years," writes Sherk. "This makes planning for the future difficult."
The report acknowledges the fact that "improvements in the job market ground to a halt after Congress passed ObamaCare" isn't proof that the health care law caused it. But, Sherk writes, "the fact does lend strong weight to the voices of businesses who say that the law is preventing hiring."
He notes that July's U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Outlook Survey found 33% of business owners consider ObamaCare to be "either their greatest or second-greatest obstacle to new hiring."
He also points to Dennis Lockhart, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, who reports that prominent among the hurdles to hiring "is the lack of clarity about the cost implications of" ObamaCare.
"We've frequently heard strong comments to the effect of 'my company won't hire a single additional worker until we know what health insurance costs are going to be,'" said Lockhart.
These findings might surprise some, but they shouldn't. A growing government is the enemy of a healthy jobs climate. |
Loading...
