A new study by Grand Valley State University professors Leslie Muller and Paul Isely suggests that the Affordable Care Act has already cost West Michigan 1000 jobs. Muller summarized the results in a Wood TV story:

“Firms are actually holding off on hiring or their reducing their hiring that they were thinking they were going to be doing because of the ACA,” said Muller.

The 1,000 jobs lost does not include the number of workers in West Michigan that have lost hours to ensure that they are kept as part-time employees. Nearly one-third panies said they have cut employees’ hours.

“We’re talking about a thousand jobs in West Michigan that would have been here absent the ACA,” Muller said.

The study found lower-skilled jobs tend to be suffering the most.

According to the Wood TV article, the report also suggests that “growth will be 0.1 to 0.2 percentages points lower in Allegan, Kent, Muskegon and Ottawa counties over the next year because of the ACA,” with Muller adding that this “is quite similar percentage-wise to what is happening in the rest of the country,”