About one out five U.S. employers are reducing for part-time workers as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a new survey by Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found.
The survey found that about 14% percent of employers have reduced for part-timers as a result of the ACA mandate that employees working 30 hours a be offered health care coverage, and another 6% plan to do so. 72% have not considered reducing hours for part-time workers.
The survey also found that 91 percent of organizations have not considered reducing employee hours for full-time employees, and 90 percent said they have not considered reducing the overall number of employees as a result of the ACA employer mandate.
(Companies are permitted to reduce workers’ hours in response to business conditions, but may be penalized if the Department of Labor and the IRS determine that they have done so only to avoid providing health insurance coverage.)
“As organizations learned more about the law, they found that their coverage levels were already the same or more than what the law required, minimizing the adjustments that some anticipated employers would need to make when the ACA was created,” said Evren Esen, director of SHRM’s survey programs.
The survey also found:
- 54% of employers require employees to work 30 hours a week to be eligible for coverage, an increase from 44 percent in 2014 and 39 percent in 2013. But 26% organizations require employees to work more than 30 hours a week to be eligible. “Some employers actually might choose for economic reasons to take a penalty rather than make this change,” Esen said.
- Two-thirds organizations (66%) said their organization offered the same level of health care benefits as before the ACA was enacted.
- About three-quarters (77%) of respondents said that their health care coverage costs increased from 2014 to 2015, while 6% saw a decrease.
- About three out five organizations have made changes to their health care coverage in the last year.
- 54% offered alternative health care plans such as health savings accounts and health reimbursement accounts this year, compared to 37% in 2013.13% said they planned to offer alternatives in the future.
- 20% had health plans with grandfathered status in the past but have since dropped the status.
- More than half (53%) said they would not be affected by an excise tax on high-cost benefits that takes effect in 2018, or are taking action to avoid the tax.
The survey polled more than 740 randomly selected HR professionals with a title of of manager or above or who work with benefits or compensation. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
