Health reform in Massachusetts in 2006 did not cause many workers to have their work hours cut, but that is no comfort for those workers nationwide who will begin to experience this side effect of the federal Affordable Care Act.

Business executives have been saying that they have, or will be, cutting workers’ hours to avoid penalties levied by the Affordable Care Act. Because the penalties are applied only to full-time workers (defined by the law as working 30 hours a week or more), redefining a worker as a part-time – a “29er,” as they are sometimes called – might save the employer money and enhance profits.

But a skeptical listener might not interpret the executives’ statements literally. In any economy, there are businesses that struggle, and maybe it’s too easy to blame the unpopular new law for deeper business difficulties.

Massachusetts also had a health reform law – sometimes called “Romneycare” after Gov. Mitt Romney, who signed it – with some of the same elements as the Affordable Care Act, including penalties on employers that did not offer health coverage to their employees. Yet Massachusetts did not seem to experience a crisis of 29ers when Romneycare was implemented.

The Washington Examiner quoted an unidentified Department of Health and Human Services official as saying that the experience in Massachusetts suggests that “the health care law will improve the affordability and accessibility of health care without significantly affecting the labor market.” But a closer look  shows that the Massachusetts experience tells us little about the number of 29ers that will be created by the Affordable Care Act.

For one, the Romneycare employer mandate was not based on the number of full-time employees. It was based on the number of full-time-equivalent employees, which means that workers are counted according to the number of hours they work, not their full-time status.

For example, cutting all workers’ hours to 39 from 40 would have the same penalty consequence under Romneycare as would cutting 1/11th of workers’ hours to 29 from 40. In Massachusetts employers could choose how to cut employee hours (if at all) on the basis of business and personal considerations; the federal law would only give relief to the 29er approach.

Second, the Romneycare penalty was deductible from an employer’s business taxes; the Affordable Care Act’s penalties will not be deductible. A Massachusetts employer avoiding the health reform’s penalty would find that his avoidance increased his business tax liability a bit.

Finally, the Romneycare penalty was only about $300 per full-time equivalent employee, whereas the Affordable Care Act’s penalty is $2,000 and set to grow with the rate of health care inflation.

For now, it may be worth listening to what the business executives are saying.

Casey B. Mulligan is an economics professor at the University of Chicago. He is the author of “The Redistribution Recession: How Labor Market Distortions Contracted the Economy.”