and getting health care and that s exactly why millions of people are being tossed off and millions more will be as the larger employers start tossing people off later in the year. he s talking there about larger employers who have got more than 50 employees, you ve got to provide or you get into big trouble. with target, if you have less than if you work less than 30 hours a week, you re considered part-time. now they re saying, go to the exchanges. they re trying to spin it by, well, only 10% of target employees have used this in the past. but some employees are really furious about it. in the meantime, the company comes back and says, look, we re just trying to help you out. the only way you re going to get the subsidy to help you pay for it is if you are on the exchange. so target, just like home depot and other company, shifting people to the exchanges. all right. let s talk about something entirely different, but i m sure you care passionately about and that s our military.
purchases last year, and that is up dramatically. you ve got these super low mortgage rates, but look at how much, 29.1% of these are all cash deals. the surge in sales and distressed properties comes despite the fact that far fewer americans lost their homes to foreclosure last year. a lot of people, i think maybe, john, they re downsizing. i think maybe people, baby boomers in particular, are moving out of a bigger house, paying all cash for a smaller house, and there are still investors, foreign investors, buying homes for cash all over the country. big target story this morning. it s battling, of course, one of the biggest customer data breaches ever. it s battling a shopping season that was disappointing. yesterday, it said it would need to cut 475 jobs as it continues to focus on transforming our business. the announcements didn t end there. target is also telling part-time workers to go get obama care. the retailer says it will no longer offer health insurance to part-time t
zeal for finding a basis to charge maureen and me have decided to break the law in this case. if found guilty they face decades in jail and fines of more than a million dollars. the latest obamacare casualty, target employees. the company is announcing it won t offer part-time benefits to employees because of obamacare. they made the decision on the blog saying it is good news for employees. it goes into effect on april 1st and employees have until mid march to sign up for obamacare to be eligible for coverage this year. before the denver broncos take on the seattle seahawks at the super bowl they will be serenaded by soprano renee fleming.
apply to everybody for everything that s happening in december that creates space for it to actually be about the christian holiday. and very quickly, i wanted to talk to you, dean, about your piece on the war on thanksgiving. you say the real war on these holidays is making people have to go to work on them. that was my thought and i wrote something for the daily beast. for the first time, more retail chains than ever opened up you early. 1 million workers had to leave their family on thanksgiving to go to work to do specials for a christmas that does not exist, apparently. the war on christmas doesn t exist any longer. and i was concerned about that. and employees are not taking this easily. many have signed petitions, target employees, walmart employees, employees around the country, saying i don t want to work on thanksgiving, and it s not about those if they want to work, that s fine. but there are many who don t want to work. we re out of time. but people working on chris
you can spend time together in the store, shopping. you can shop online, carol. people are like, i ve got to shop. today s my day to shop. sit around the computer. post things on facebook. you can shop all day. the stores should have a little bit of concern. and i think compassion, frankly, for their workers. it s not just me saying this. if people googled thanks giving day workers upset, you ll find pages and pages, red states, blue states, target employees have a petition, over 100,000 people signed. they don t want to work. here is the thing, dean. employees don t want to work. they re upset. shoppers aren t upset. by and large, thousands and thousands of people will head out on thanksgiving morning or thanksgiving late afternoon and they ll go to the store and it s like the people have spoken. there s no going back now. i think there is. this year is the first year we have this numerous new chains opening up. and it s all about business. carol, you re right. it s all about