Obamacare Will Result in 2 Million Fewer Workers in Near Future, Devastating New Gov't Report Says

The Affordable Care Act will result in approximately 2 million fewer American workers by 2017, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The report says that the exodus will be due to Obamacare forcing workers to either cut back their hours or drop out of the workforce all together.

The latest numbers mark a sizable increase in the CBO’s earlier estimates.

“CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 to 2 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor — given the new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial benefits some will receive,” the report stated.

Debt held by the public will increase exponentially in the near future, according to the CBO. (Image source: CBO)

But that wasn’t the only dark spot for Obamacare: The report said the disastrous, error-riddled implementation of the Obamacare website has cost about 1 million signups.

The CBO had originally estimated that approximately 7 million Americans would sign up through the state-based exchanges. But the glitchy website rollout has forced the CBO to revise the number down by 1 million.

The report added that by 2020, roughly 30 million Americans will be without health insurance, down from this year’s estimate of 45 million. Approximately 92 percent of legal U.S. citizens without access to Medicare coverage will have insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Elsewhere in the report, the CBO said Congress has managed to rein in the deficit. In fact, according to the report, the deficit for fiscal year 2014 will likely come in at around $514 billion, down from previous estimates of $560 billion.

The CBO said it expects the deficit to decline again in 2015, but added that it will likely exceed $1 trillion by 2020 due to fewer revenues flowing into the Treasury Department.

The report said the pace of the recovery is far more sluggish and disappointing when compared to previous recoveries.

Lastly, debt held by the public, which is already at a post-World War II high, is expected to increase “by more than $700 billion in 2013, reaching 72 percent of GDP, higher than the percentage in 2012 (70 percent) or in any other year since 1950,” the report stated.

“As recently as 2007, it had been only 35 percent of GDP. Under the assumptions that govern CBO’s baseline, the federal government is projected to borrow another $9.3 trillion from 2014 through 2024, pushing debt held by the public up to 79 percent of GDP by the end of the projection period,” the report said.

Read the full report here:

--

Follow Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) on Twitter

This post has been updated.