Ken Adams has been turning to more part-time workers at his 10 Subway sandwich shops in Michigan to avoid possibly incurring higher health-care costs under the new federal insurance law.
He added approximately 25 part-time workers in May and June as he reduced some employees’ hours and replaced other workers who left. The move showed how efforts by some restaurant owners and other businesses to remake their workforces because of the Affordable Care Act may be turning the country’s labor market into a more part-time workforce.
Restaurants and bars have been adding an average of 50,000 jobs monthly since April—about double the rate from 2012. In June, they added a seasonally adjusted 51,700 jobs, up from May’s 47,900 tally, but below April’s 51,800. Overall, leisure-and-hospitality establishments hired more workers than any other industry in June, accounting for 75,000 of the 195,000 jobs added last month, according to the most recent Labor Department report, although economists cautioned against reading too much into one month’s preliminary figures.
