Miners top survey as hardest drinkers in the U.S. workforce

Drug abuse — including and especially alcohol abuse — costs the U.S. economy billions of dollars in lost productivity each year. New government data released this month can tell us which industries’ employees drink the most, which do the most drugs, and where employees are most likely not just to use drugs, but abuse them.

Mining is tough work and dangerous, so it may not be surprising that miners are the hardest drinkers in the U.S. survey — nothing like spending the day deep underground surrounded by tons of rock to make you crave a cold one when you get home. Eighteen per cent of miners are “heavy drinkers,” defined here as “drinking five or more drinks on the same occasion (i.e., at the same time or within a couple of hours of each other) on five or more days in the past 30 days.”

They’re followed by construction workers at 17 per cent and hotel and restaurant workers at 12 per cent.

When it comes to drug use, on the other hand, those hotel and restaurant workers are the heaviest users, hands-down: 19 per cent used an illicit drug in the past month. They’re followed by arts and entertainment workers at 14 per cent and, perhaps surprisingly, managers at 12 per cent.

You might take some comfort knowing that your kids’ school teachers are among the least likely to be heavy drinkers or drug users: just five per cent of educators drink heavily and a similar proportion report regular drug use. And in what will certainly come as a shock to anyone who has observed the U.S. Congress in recent years, public administrators are the group least likely to use illicit drugs.

It’s important to note that much of this variation isn’t necessarily a direct function of the nature of the work in these industries, but rather of the types of people who work in them. For instance, we know men drink and use drugs more heavily than women, and young people are more into drugs and alcohol than older ones. So if an industry is dominated by young or male workers, it stands to reason you’ll see higher rates of drinking and drug use in that industry.

For instance, the researchers write that one reason miners drink so much is they tend to be young and male. Construction workers, on the other hand, showed abnormally high heavy drinking rates even after controlling for age and gender.

Researchers found, however, no difference in the distribution of drug use across the industries even when controlling for age and gender. Whether young or old, male or female, restaurant and hotel workers truly are the heaviest drug users.

There’s something of a false equivalence going on in these two categories, drug use and heavy drinking. The researchers didn’t break down the numbers by specific drug, but given that marijuana is the most widely used illicit substance, it’s a safe bet many people would show up in the “drug use” category simply if they smoked a joint or two in the 30 days prior to the survey. This is, unequivocally, much less harmful or risky behaviour than drinking heavily over that same time period.

But the study did separately break out workers who would qualify as having a substance abuse disorder for either drugs or alcohol. To meet that criteria, your substance use would either need to interfere with your ability to do work, or cause you legal trouble or interpersonal problems, or otherwise put you in danger.

And again, hotel and restaurant workers show the highest rate of past-year substance abuse problems, followed by construction workers and employees in the arts and entertainment industry.

Managers also make a relatively strong showing in this category.