The opioid crisis hits manufacturing’s ability to grow

As more working age adults become hooked on opioids or die from drug overdoses, manufacturing companies struggle to find new employees to take advantage of new business opportunities.

For most of us, our knowledge of opioid addition is defined by what we see on television or in movies. It’s a device to move a plot along, not a real-world concern. For a growing number of U.S. citizens, however, the plot point is now becoming a major point of pain.

It’s believed that 115 Americans die from an opioid overdose each day. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is concerned enough about the trend that it points to drug overdoses as being the single biggest reason that life expectancy in the U.S. has dropped for the second year in a row. Despite the advancement of modern medicine and the widespread knowledge of what constitutes a healthy lifestyle, one of the most advanced societies in western civilization is losing ground to a scourge that seemingly has come out of nowhere.

Of course, that’s not the case. It’s been a slow build, but opioid addition has started to dominate headlines in recent years. What started as a rash of overprescribing by the nation’s doctors is now a full-blown crisis that’s caught the attention of the media, politicians, and the manufacturing community.

You might wonder why manufacturers care about this, but they have to take notice. Their labor pool is dying before their eyes.

The American Action Forum recently released a study that not only analyzed findings from previous studies on the economic impact of opioid addiction, but also looked at economic data associated with the U.S. workforce population and GDP growth between 1999 and 2015. Linking those data points together, the think tank believes it has a more accurate picture of just how this addiction problem is making it harder for manufacturers to find employees.

The study suggested that approximately 425,000 men and 471,000 women between the ages of 25 and 54 who were employed or looking for a job left the labor force by 2015 because of opioid addiction. That total number of workers represents almost 25 percent of the total decline in U.S. labor force participation over the years covered in the study.

In another study (“Ignorance Isn’t Bliss. The Impact of Opioids on Manufacturing”) released in early 2018, the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI) foundation drilled down into the issue and got to the crux of the matter: Counties where manufacturing companies dominated the employment scene have witnessed extraordinary increases in opioid overdoses. More specifically, by the end of 2016, the 70 counties in 11 states that employed the largest number of manufacturing workers had “statistically significant” increases in drug overdose deaths that year. Those states—Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia—also represent 41 percent of U.S. manufacturing GDP.

In some states, the situation is particularly dire. For example, Ohio is home to four of the counties with the highest drug overdose deaths and the highest share of manufacturing employment. Ohio, which represents 4.9 percent of total U.S. manufacturing output, trails only California and Texas in being the largest contributors to overall manufacturing GDP in the U.S.

“The acceleration and penetration of this crisis have followed a consistent path across the country, and each year it has gotten worse. There’s no evidence of it slowing down yet,” the authors of the study wrote.

This crisis only heightens the challenge for manufacturers that have been trying to find the right skilled talent to bring into their organizations, particularly in the face of a manufacturing economy that is robust. Whereas manufacturing companies once complained about potential workers failing drug tests, they now have to cope with the fact that the labor pool is shrinking because of drug overdoses. It makes potential expansion plans even more difficult. Automation can help in certain situations, but in many instances a company requires engaged operators to navigate the high-mix, low-volume, high-stress world of metal fabricating.

Certainly, some may be dismissive of helping people who struggle with drug addiction. It’s a choice that got these people into trouble, they argue. I thought the same thing at one time, until I learned of a member of my extended family who injured himself working out and got hooked on pain medications. He lost a full-time job and made decisions that pushed away family members. It’s hard to fathom such a transformation in a person until you recognize it and start to understand the forces behind it.

History suggests that the U.S. will respond boldly and successfully to this problem. (Remember the AIDS epidemic of the 1990s?) Doctors are being more restrictive with their prescriptions, and both federal and state governments are pledging more financial support.

But those actions don’t diminish the pain and damage occurring now. Many a family’s tragedy is turning into a national nightmare. Manufacturers have a front-row seat, and it’s not pretty.