“Why don’t they make it a 20 hour work week and then there will be jobs aplenty.”
I suspect there at least two issues. As a boss you don’t know until your employee turns in his timecard that it’s the second week when he worked 30-plus hours. Now, you must pay for insurance. And, there will be plenty of people who do just that.
Secondly, at federal and state level there has been talk of punishing companies who cut part time hours to get around paying for insurance. Even just discussing such a plan would be enough to make risk-averse employers simply fire every part time employee. That eliminates the issue even before it becomes an issue. (What, employers think, if they make this law backdated to a date when we did this? Okay, we’ll simply fire everybody now and not worry about it.)
It is not even close to illegal to manage your workforce in a way to reduce costs.
Are people who work less than 30 hours a week required to buy insurance or get fined?
How does medicare and VA work in obamacare? Is medicare considered the required insurance? Do the vets have “affordable insurance” at the VA?