By John Goodman Filed under New Health Care Law on January 7, 2013 with 8 comments
Beginning this time next year…the Affordable Care Act will put new requirements on businesses with 50 or more full-time employees, whereas businesses with 49 or fewer employees will be exempt…[Similarly,] French companies employing 50 or more workers are, among other things, obligated “to establish a committee on health, safety and working conditions and train its members,” whereas companies with 49 employees are not…
The chart below, reproduced from their paper using data on employers in France, shows the number of employers of various sizes…
Luis Garicano, Claire Lelarge and John Van Reenen, “Firm Size Distortions and the Productivity Distribution: Evidence From France.”
The chart shows a couple of odd patterns at the 50-employee mark. First, there are sharply fewer employers (by more than a factor of two) with exactly 50 employees than with exactly 49 employees. Second, although the number of companies usually falls with the number of employees, there are actually more employers with 49 employees than with 45 employees.
