The impact of the Affordable Care Act on small business earnings and employment continues to wreak havoc across America.
According to a report by the American Action Forum (AAF), the salaries of employees working for small businesses that employ 20 to 99 employees were reduced $22.6 billion annually due to Obamacare regulations and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
In addition, due to rising premiums and regulations under the ACA more than 350,000 small business jobs have disappeared on a national scale, “with five states losing more than 20,000 jobs.”
For businesses with 50 to 99 workers, we found that a one percent increase in total premiums has been associated with a 0.109 percent decrease in average weekly pay since the ACA. So a 19.8 percent increase in total premiums is associated with a 2.2 percent decrease in average weekly pay. This is consistent with past research from the Journal of Labor Economics, suggesting a double-digit increase in premiums reduced wages by 2.3 percent. Accordingly, our results suggest that the average weekly pay of $831 in 2013 was 2.2 percent lower than it would have been absent the ACA, costing workers $18.70 per week.[11] Moreover, if employees work all year, our results suggest that ACA regulations are costing them on average $935 annually….
For businesses with 20 to 49 workers, we found that a one percent increase in total premiums has been associated with a 0.031 percent decrease in average weekly pay since the ACA. This suggests that the 19.8 percent increase in total premiums since the ACA is associated with a 0.6 percent decrease in average weekly pay. Moreover, we also found that in businesses with 20 to 49 employees before the ACA a one percent increase in total premiums was associated with a 0.077 percent increase in weekly pay. Thus, if the ACA had never become law, the 19.8 percent increase in total premiums since 2009 would have been associated with a 1.5 percent increase in weekly pay. So our results indicate that on net, the average weekly pay of $771 in 2013 was actually 2.1 percent lower than it would have been without the ACA, costing workers on average $16.55 per week. To put that in perspective, if employees work year round, they are losing about $827.50 on average due to ACA regulations….
Nationwide the employer mandate costs workers of small businesses with 50 to 99 employees at least $10.8 billion annually and workers of small businesses with 20 to 49 employees at least $22.6 billion annually.
You can view the full report here or below.
LINK:
http://americanactionforum.org/research/ObamaCares-Impact-on-Small-Business-Wages-and-Employment