Nearly 1 Million People Were Out of the Workforce Because of Opioid Addiction in 2015, According to Study

A study published by the American Action Forum found 919,400 people between the ages of 25 to 54 were out of the U.S. workforce because of opioid addiction in 2015, reports the Washington Post . This cost the U.S. economy $702 billion, or slightly less than $44 billion annually from 1999 to 2015. The loss of work hours caused the economic growth rate to slow by 0.2 percentage points from 1999 to 2015. "Estimates suggest, had these workers been in the labor force and not addicted to opioids, the growth rate would have been 2.2 percent," says the American Action Forum's Ben Gitis. More work hours were lost for women — 6.4 billion — compared to men, who were down 5.7 billion over the 16-year study period. Employers in some parts of the country are struggling to fill vacancies despite the economic recovery and in some regions they say it is hard to find people who can pass a drug test — so much so that some firms are eliminating them. "It's something we hear companies talk about all the time, not being able to have workers pass drug tests and being unable to simply get workers to apply because they know they won't pass the drug test," Gitis says. "It was really important that we get a sense of what the magnitude of this could be."