A number of companies want to hire, but many potential workers are failing drug tests.
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Just a few miles from where President Donald Trump will address his blue-collar base here Tuesday night, exactly the kind of middle-class factory jobs he has vowed to bring back from overseas are going begging.
It’s not that local workers lack the skills for these positions, many of which do not even require a high school diploma but pay $15 to $25 an hour and offer full benefits. Rather, the problem is that too many applicants — nearly half, in some cases — fail drug tests.
The fallout is not limited to the workers or their immediate families. Each quarter, Columbiana Boiler, a local company, forgoes roughly $200,000 worth of orders for its galvanized containers and kettles because of the manpower shortage, it says, with foreign rivals picking up the slack.
“Our main competitor in Germany can get things done more quickly because they have a better labor pool,” said Michael Sherwin, chief executive of the 123-year-old manufacturer. “We are always looking for people and have standard ads at all times, but at least 25 percent fail the drug tests.”
The economic impact of drug use on the workforce is being felt across the country, and perhaps nowhere more than in this region, which is struggling to overcome decades of deindustrialization.
Indeed, the opioid epidemic and, to some extent, wider marijuana use are hitting businesses and the economy in ways that are beginning to be acknowledged by policymakers and other experts.
A federal study estimated that prescription opioid abuse cost the economy $78.5 billion in 2013, but that does not capture the broader effect on businesses from factors like lost productivity, according to Curtis Florence, who led the research for the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
“That’s definitely a conservative estimate,” Florence said.
The effect is seen not just in the applicants eliminated based on drug screening, but in those deterred from even applying. In congressional testimony this month, the Federal Reserve chair, Janet Yellen, linked increased opioid abuse to declining participation in the labor force among prime-age workers.
The Fed’s regular Beige Book surveys of economic activity across the country in April, May and July all noted the inability of employers to find workers able to pass drug screenings.
“It’s not just a matter of labor participation; there is also a lot of collateral economic damage,” said Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist who wrote a widely discussed paper on the subject last year.
Were it not for the drug issue, said Krueger, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, workers trapped in low-wage jobs might be able to secure better-paying, skilled bluecollar positions and a toehold in the middle class.
“This hasn’t gotten as much attention as the participation issue, but we could potentially match perhaps 10 percent of the population in better jobs,” he said. “That could have a positive, cascading effect on wages.”
Plants like Sherwin’s can help provide that ladder. But workplace considerations — not social conservatism or imposition of traditional mores — make employee drug use an issue.
“The lightest product we make is 1,500 pounds, and they go up to 250,000 pounds,” Sherwin said as workers pulled a barrelshaped steel container from a glowing forge amid a shower of sparks. “If something goes wrong, it won’t hurt our workers. It’ll kill them — and that’s why we can’t take any risks with drugs.”
Even as many states decriminalize recreational marijuana use, or allow access by prescription for medical use, “relaxing drug policies isn’t an option for manufacturers in terms of insurance and liability,” said Edmond O’Neal of Northeast Indiana Works, a nonprofit group that provides education and skills training.
“We are talking to employers every day, and they tell us they are having more and more trouble finding people who can pass a drug test,” he said. “I’ve heard kids say pot isn’t a drug. It may not be, but pot will prevent you from getting a job.”
The biggest employers face similar challenges in their search for suitable hires, especially with the national unemployment rate now at 4.4 percent, down from 8.2 percent five years ago.