More likely is this, especially in the entry-level service industries and food service.
Guy has 50 people working for him at $12.50 per hour. Total weekly payroll of $22,500.
If he adds one more person, he has to pay a ton of money to Obastard.
Instead, he wisely backs every one of the existing 50 down to 30 hours, then hires 18 more at 30 hours. Total weekly payroll is now $25,500; total hours worked per week went from 2,000 to 2,040, same as if he had added the 51st employee before ObastardDeathPanels took office. Of course, there is more turnover, training, retraining, admin and overhead, but all that is much less than Obastard demands in tribute.
I expected to find a chart that overall looked like exponential decay, a huge number of 1 and 2 employee sole proprietorships, a big pile of 3-10, a smaller pile of 20 something, tapering down to a very few mega-employers.
What I wanted to see was how bad the pile-up was at 49.
Alas, I couldn't find such a chart.