Bloomberg (08/26/13) Kasia Klimasinska; Shobhana Chandra

The U.S. economy is doing much better, five years after the Great Recession. The country is handling federal budget cuts and higher payroll taxes, the economy is growing, and some economists are forecasting that the expansion may last longer than most. Businesses are hiring and investing, households are spending, home sales are picking up, and the automotive sector is robust.

“We are in a much better place than we were five years ago,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, PA. “Consumers are feeling much, much better; certainly investors are.”

MarketWatch (08/26/13) Russ Britt

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco issued a paper on Monday that said President Obama’s health care overhaul probably only had a small role in the recent increase in part-time jobs compared with full-time employment. The paper points out that most large employers were already prevented from denying full-time workers health benefits, giving them an incentive to create part-time jobs to avoid rising costs.

Also, research indicates that part-time work will only increase by one or two percentage points when the Affordable Care Act goes into effect. The study stated that recent part-time employment patterns are consistent with those of previous recessions.