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Many Americans are TOO Drugged-out to Work

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Opening Insights


Pocket Wisdom Insights (PWI) invites you to explore the following Co-Lab Blog.
This blog features parts of an  insightful article featured outside of the PWI Co-Lab,
written by Steve LeVine on June 30th, 2017, published by Axios.
We have republished this content in respect of the author’s vision, message and research.


Informational Insights

A slew of reports finds a fresh reason for the chronic inability of American companies to fill skilled jobs: not a lack of skills, and hence a training-and-education crisis, but a surfeit of drug abuse, per the NYT's Nelson Schwartz. Simply put, prime-working age Americans without a college diploma are often too drugged-out to get the best jobs.

Opioids remain at high levels, but the surge in drug use is now heroin and the powerful contaminant fentanyl.

The reports suggest a circularity to the crisis in America's rust and manufacturing belts: the loss of jobs and wage stagnation has led to widespread disaffection, alienation and drug abuse; and drug abuse has led to joblessness, hopelessness and disaffection.

But the numbers are all over the map. Some employers and economists say up to half of job applicants do not clear drug tests; others say it is 25%. In the chart above, Indeed economist Jed Kolko, using data from the U.S. Current Population Survey, found that 5.6% to 5.7% of working-age adults didn't work last year because of illness or disability, an unknown percentage of which were because of drug use.

[..]

...the anecdotal and economic evidence is compelling.

  • LinkedIn's Chip Cutter found a West Virginia company where "up to half of applicants either fail or refuse to take mandatory pre-employment drug screens." The executive of another company called the drugs epidemic "probably the biggest threat in manufacturing, period."
  • "In Congressional testimony earlier this month," Cutter writes, "Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen related opioid use to a decline in the labor participation rate. The past three Fed surveys on the economy, known as the Beige Book, explicitly mentioned employers' struggles in finding applicants to pass drug tests as a barrier to hiring."

Source: Axios

Possibilities for Consideration

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I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.
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FOOTNOTE of Importance


Our world is experiencing an incredible revolution powered by technology that has used its tools to:

  • deceive the public
  • disrupt tradition
  • divide the people

This has inadvertently resulted in a Fear-based Shadow Culture™ that has hurt many people.
A powerful group of influence has joined together to deliver a proven antidote by shifting from impersonal development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to replace people to utilize AI to empower Human Intelligence (HI).

 

To Empower The People:

 
  

Distraction Junction

 
 

What is a Modern Hero?:

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We invite Heroes and Visionaries
to explore accessing these powerful methodologies and resources
to achieve their individual visions.




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