Help wanted: Drug treatment key
President Donald Trump has made a political career out of linking the demise of American manufacturing to globalism, tax policy and hyper-regulation. But a different, serious cause is that employers cannot find enough workers for goodpaying jobs because many applicants can’t pass a drug test. This is a particular problem in old, industrial communities from the Rust Belt to Appalachia, and it shows that solutions lie in greater drug counseling and job-training programs, not in the Trump administration’s push for harsher drug prosecutions.
The New York Times recently cast light on the phenomenon , quoting factory owners and executives in Youngstown, Ohio, who have trouble filling bluecollar jobs. Even those jobs paying up to $25 per hour with full benefits for workers lacking even a high school diploma sat empty, as nearly half the applicants in some cases could not pass a drug test. Many who were uncertain whether they could pass would not return for a followup interview.
These lost opportunities in hard-hit, middle-class factory towns show the economic toll of drug use in the workforce. The chief executive of one boiler manufacturer in Youngstown said his company forgoes about $200,000 in business quarterly because of the labor shortage, with at least 25 percent of his job applicants failing the drug test. One federal study estimated that prescription-opioid abuse cost the economy nearly $79 billion in 2013, but that figure does not include lost productivity, which is fast becoming a major factor in the industrial economy. Job applicants are being left behind in the market, or not applying for positions at all — disrupting the workforce, curbing spending and the rise of the middle class, and limiting economic growth in regions already struggling to adapt in a global economy.
The impacts of drug use amount to a double blow for many of these businesses. Drug tests are common and appropriate for highly dangerous factory, trucking and other industrial jobs, where drug use can mean the difference between life and death in the workplace. Many of these firms already pay high costs for health and liability insurance, and they are caught again paying for drug treatment for employees and their families. A small machine shop in Hubbard, Ohio, said that at least 40 percent of its applicants test positive for drugs and that the company has paid more than a halfmillion dollars in recent years in drug-related health care costs.
Employers are being creative, establishing apprenticeships to expand the talent pool and using recruiters to screen targeted job applicants. But that is costly and time-consuming. Coming as the Trump administration pushes a harder approach even against lower-level drug defendants, and with opioid abuse still rampant, the impacts to manufacturing are expected to worsen.
Intervention and diversion programs have been proven to work, especially for those facing minor drug offenses. Coupled with counseling and job training, this approach has a better likelihood of getting workers clean and on track to a good-paying job and a ladder into the middle class. The federal government and the states need to commit more resources to drug treatment so these companies can grow and these communities can remain viable.