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."
Possibilities for Consideration
Take a moment and examine…
- As you reviewed the material above, what stood out to you?
- What is the potential impact, economically and/or socially?
- What action is needed to stop or support this idea?
- You may want to consider whether you:
- want to be aware of,
- should become supportive of,
- would want to be active in this topic?
Add Your Insight
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; we must do.
LEONARDO DA VINCI