Alcohol and drugs: a scourge also for the world of work
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The prevention of drug and alcohol abuse is not only a very important social issue, indeed an essential one, but it also has economic implications that are rarely considered by those who support liberal policies in this area. For example, drug and alcohol abuse are beginning to negatively affect the labor force participation rate in the US, according to a new study by Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta researcher Karen Kopecky, Jeremy Greenwood of the University of Pennsylvania and Nezih Guner from the University of Pennsylvania. 'Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.
The study was reported last week by Bloomberg in this article .
What emerged was that between 9% and 26% of the decline in early age workforce participation between February 2020 and June 2021 was due to "an increase in substance abuse." Labor force participation between the ages of 25 and 54 has yet to fully recover from the March 2020 crash, the report said. So far, the Fed had blamed the decline on "problems with childcare and elderly care, school closures in person, concerns about sickness and excessive unemployment benefits."
The labor force participation rate remains one of the key factors the Fed hopes to influence as it moves to raise rates throughout the year.
The study noted: "Once started, drug and alcohol abuse is difficult for many to stop… an increase in substance abuse during the pandemic would mean lower labor force participation rates even after the pandemic is over."
The drop in participation was disproportionately aided by Americans without a college degree, the report said.
The news comes despite the participation rate rising to 62.4% last month, which marks its highest in two years. But, as Bloomberg notes, this remains 1% less than before the pandemic.
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The article Alcohol and Drugs: a scourge also for the world of work comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/alcol-e-droga-un-flagello-anche-per-il-mondo-del-lavoro/ on Mon, 18 Apr 2022 08:00:38 +0000.