Obamacare Creating Thousands of Jobs. For Bureaucrats.
Amidst continuing record-high unemployment and economic stagnation, it’s worth looking at the one area of the economy that HAS succeeded in creating jobs under President Obama – the federal government. According to Office of Personnel Management statistics, from September 2008 (just before President Obama was elected) through December last year, the Department of Health and Human Services grew by 9,424 employees. That’s a double-digit increase in the number of HHS bureaucrats in just a three-year period.
Judging from the data, it’s very clear that those new bureaucrats are being used to implement Obamacare. For instance, employment in the Office of the Secretary went up by more than 3,000 (a 22% jump), and the number of bureaucrats at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services increased by over 800 (nearly a 20% increase). The Office of the Secretary and CMS are two offices most responsible for implementing Obamacare’s stifling new regulations and mandates.
These 9,000+ new bureaucrats have certainly earned their keep. Through the two-year anniversary of Obamacare just last month, the federal government issued a whopping 12,307 pages of regulations and notices in the Federal Register. But while writing all these regulations has created thousands of new jobs for government bureaucrats, the regulations themselves have stifled employment for businesses. A survey released yesterday by the US Chamber of Commerce found that nearly three in four (73%) small businesses believe Obamacare is an obstacle to growing their businesses and hiring additional workers.
So in fairness, Obamacare is creating many thousands of new jobs. It’s just that those jobs are the wrong kind of jobs – new taxpayer-funded government bureaucrats that hinder private sector economic growth and new hiring.