Please provide your zip code to see plans in your area.
Call our agency partners
866-553-3223
ACA Enrollment
Insurance Options
Medicare & Medicaid
Featured
Guides
Calculators
Latest News & Topics
Featured
A trusted independent health insurance guide since 1994.
The full-time equivalent is used to determine employer size under the ACA. Any employee working at least 30 hours per week is considered full time. In addition, part-time employees are counted using the full-time equivalent method of adding the total number of hours worked by all part time employees in a month, and dividing by 120.
So if a business has 10 employees who each work 80 hours per month, they would have 800 part-time hours. Dividing by 120 gives us 6.66, and the answer is rounded down to get six full-time equivalent employees.
The ACA’s employer mandate applies to any employer who has at least 50 full-time equivalent employees. This can be a combination of full-time and full-time equivalent employees, with each full-time employee counting as one, and full-time equivalent employees added as described above. If the employer had 50 or more full-time equivalent employees, they must offer affordable, minimum value health insurance to all of the full-time employees (but not to part-time employees who work fewer than 30 hours per week).
Related articles
Businesses with 50 or more full-time equivalent (FTE) employees are required to offer comprehensive, affordable health insurance coverage or they risk a penalty.
Here are some common scenarios in which you wouldn't have access to employer-sponsored insurance – and suggestions for how you can still get affordable, comprehensive health insurance.
The 'family glitch’ has left several million Americans ineligible for the ACA's subsidies. But a newly proposed rule change could bring relief for some as of 2023.
If your employer-sponsored insurance becomes unaffordable or stops providing minimum value, the change may be a qualifying event.
You cannot qualify for a health insurance premium subsidy unless the insurance your employer offers would force you to kick in more than 9.83% of your income to cover your share of the premium in 2021 – or is so skimpy that it pays for less than 60% of the average employee’s covered benefits.