{"id":22262,"date":"2014-03-17T08:02:12","date_gmt":"2014-03-17T12:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=22262"},"modified":"2014-03-17T08:02:12","modified_gmt":"2014-03-17T12:02:12","slug":"the-change-in-work-hours-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=22262","title":{"rendered":"The Change In Work Hours In America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal<\/a> posted an article about the February jobs report<\/a> released on March 7. The report shows that employment fell, as it has in four out of the past six months and in more than one-third of the months during the past two years. This is not an indication of a strong, growing economy.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

Although it is often overlooked, a key statistic for understanding the labor market<\/a> is the length of the average<\/a> workweek<\/a>. Small changes in the average workweek imply large changes in total hours worked. The average workweek in the U.S. has fallen to 34.2 hours in February from 34.5 hours in September 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics<\/a>. That decline, coupled with mediocre job creation, implies that the total hours of employment have decreased over the period.<\/strong><\/p>\n

…What accounts for the declining average workweek? In some instances\u2014but not this one\u2014a minor drop could be the result of a statistical fluke caused by rounding. Because the Bureau of Labor Statistics only reports hours to the nearest 1\/10th, a small movement, say, to 34.449 hours from 34.450 hours, would be reported as a reduction in hours worked to 34.4 from 34.5, vastly overstating the loss in worked time. But the six-month decline in the workweek, to 34.2 from 34.5 hours, cannot be the consequence of a rounding error<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is a rather strong possibility that the decline in working hours<\/a> is due to the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare<\/a>). Under that law, businesses with fewer than 50 full-time employees (full time is defined as 30 hours a week), are not required to provide health insurance for their employees. This is one example of one of the many unintended consequences<\/a> of ObamaCare, although there are many people who would argue that it is an intended consequence.<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal posted an article about the February jobs report released on March 7. The report shows that employment fell, as it has in four out of the past six months and in more than one-third of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1659,134,4090,285,238,6381,7277],"class_list":["post-22262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bureau-of-labor-statistics","tag-patient-protection-and-affordable-care-act","tag-report","tag-united-states","tag-wall-street-journal","tag-working-time","tag-workweek-and-weekend"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22263,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22262\/revisions\/22263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}