Congress: Full Time Jobs; Working Hours Will Plummet Due To ObamaCare; Non-Partisan Estimate; This Is Not FOX News Reporting; The Analysis Is Particularly Interesting

I predicted this from the very beginning ... ObamaCare would result in fewer full-time jobs. I was so sure of this I even have a tag at the bottom of the blog: "29_Hour_Work_Week."

Now, the Congressional Budget Office says the same thing -- and it's not a trivial number. CNBC is reporting:

A historically high number of people will be locked out of the workforce by 2021, according to a report by the Congressional Budget Office released Tuesday.

President Barack Obama's signature health-care law will contribute to this phenomenon, the CBO said, citing new estimates that the Affordable Care Act will cause a larger-than-expected reduction in working hours—eliminating the equivalent of about 2.3 million workers in 2021.

In 2011, the CBO estimated the law would cause a reduction of about 800,000 full-time equivalent workers. 

The CBO is nearly tripling the number of jobs lost from earlier estimates. 

The Washington Times is saying the same thing:

Obamacare will push the equivalent of about 2 million workers out of the labor market by 2017 as employees decide either to work fewer hours or drop out altogether, according to the latest estimates Tuesday from the Congressional Budget Office.

That’s a major jump in the nonpartisan budget agency’s projections and it suggests the health care law’s incentives are driving businesses and people to choose government-sponsored benefits rather than work.

And those who are able to keep their jobs will start paying more for their own insurance. The gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" will simply widen.

The third article has a particularly analysis. Yahoo!Finance reports:

..... a new Congressional Budget Office report says the Affordable Care Act may cost the economy more jobs than previously projected while insuring fewer Americans.

Newly revised CBO projections show that President Obama’s signature health care law may reduce workforce participation by about 2.3 million workers by 2017. That’s compared to the previous estimate of 800,000 fewer workers by 2021.

The CBO suggests the reason for the reduction essentially boil down to employees deciding to work less or opt out of the workforce entirely if they can obtain coverage and subsidies under the new health exchanges.

That CBO analysis is MOST interesting: the CBO says that workers themselves will make the decision to opt out or work less; it is not because employers will be cost shifting or decreasing the number of job openings. If that turns out to be true, that could result in huge changes in monthly "unemployment" numbers.

The Fiscal Times has an in-depth analysis of jobs and ObamaCare as well as numerous additional links: The Great ObamaCare Workforce Exodus.