Across the country, employers are having to turn away much needed workers, not because the workers are underskilled, but that more and more applicants are failing drug tests.
From an analysis of more than 10 million employees, Quest Diagnosis puts workplace illicit drug use at a 12-year high. Unfortunately, this increasing trend in workplace drug use is relatively recent—2013 was the first year to show an increase in Quest Diagnosis’s records from 1988.
Quest Diagnosis reported on May 16 that cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamine were the main drugs at issue for employees.
The concern this poses for workplace safety is very real, with some industries feeling more of an impact than others. The industries like manufacturing, where employee drug testing is federally mandated due to the dangerous nature of the manual tasks, finding employees has become a particular challenge.
The Fed’s most recent Beige Book survey reported such an employee shortage for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. This district represents 14.6 million people from the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.
