Evening Must-Read: Dylan Scott: The GOP Has It Wrong: Obamacare Won’t ‘Cost’ 2 Million Jobs

Dylan Scott: The GOP Has It Wrong: Obamacare Won’t ‘Cost’ 2 Million Jobs: “The CBO report, in fact, specifically undermines that [Republican] claim.

Those lost hours will ‘almost entirely’ be the result of people choosing to work fewer hours because of Obamacare–not because they lost their jobs or can’t find a full-time job.

The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses’ demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what would have occurred otherwise rather than as an increase in unemployment (that is, more workers seeking but not finding jobs) or underemployment (such as part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week).

The report explicitly says that Obamacare isn’t going to force businesses to cut jobs on any grand scale. What it is going to do is change how much Americans work. ‘I think it’s important to distinguish between people choosing to work less and jobs being lost’, Larry Levitt, vice president at the non-partisan Kaiser Famiy Foundation, told TPM. ‘That is something important to keep an eye on, since you don’t want to discourage work. But, it’s not in all cases a bad thing’.