Working Hard, Playing Harder: 1 in 10 workers report substance use disorders

1 in 10 workers report substance use disorders; some industries have higher rates of use

Nearly ten percent of American workers aged 18 to 64 recently revealed signs of a substance use disorder. And drug and alcohol use varied significantly across job sectors with tough, labor-intensive jobs like mining and construction registering the highest rates of drinking, while the arts and food service industries were aligned with heightened illicit drug use.

That’s what data from a recent report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) suggests, highlighting an ongoing problem with drug and alcohol use in the workplace and identifying jobs that, at least by the numbers, might be particularly unhealthy given the toll they take on employees or the culture of use they create.

The multi-year study, the first conducted since 2007, is designed to capture key data across 19 U.S. industries and sheds light on trends in the way drug and alcohol use impacts the economy and workforce.

Substance abuse costs companies billions of dollars annually due to losses in productivity, absenteeism, reduced morale, and workforce accidents. SAMHSA’s study helps to outline trends in use across individual business sectors, and also compares overall worker substance use rates to those of previous years. The result is a picture of not only what substance use looks like in today’s workforce, but how it is evolving and which industries might show patterns worthy of concern – for employees and employers alike.

The latest study examined drug and alcohol use in 111,500 adults with full-time jobs from 2008 to 2012. In the survey, heavy alcohol use was defined as drinking five or more drinks on the same occasion (i.e., at the same time or within a couple of hours of each other) on 5 or more days in the past 30 days.

The study also included a series of questions to assess symptoms of dependence on or abuse of alcohol or illicit drugs during the past year. It found that, overall, 9.5 percent of workers have struggled with alcohol or drug abuse issues in the past year. In the past-month, 8.7 percent of workers across all industries reported they had used alcohol heavily, while 8.6 percent said had used illicit drugs with frequency.

Industries with High Rates of Use

For specific industries, rates of alcohol use ranged from 4.4 percent (for those working in healthcare and social assistance) to 17.5 percent (for those working in mining). Individuals in the construction business also registered unusually high rates of heavy drinking at 16.5 percent, as did those in the accommodations and food service industry at 12 percent.

When it comes to drug use, the highest rates by far were seen in the accommodations and food services industry, with 19.1 percent of workers having used illicit drugs regularly in the past month. The lowest rates were seen in public administration. Those in the arts, entertainment and recreation industry were the next-most likely to have abused substances in the past month, with 13.7 percent having done so. For substance use disorder (addiction) in the past year, 16.9 percent of those in the accommodations and food services industry reported problems.

It is important to note that, in some instances, the types of workers that gravitate to a particular field is as much a determinant of their drug or alcohol use as the stressful or taxing nature of the work itself.

For instance, other research has shown that men tend to drink and use drugs more heavily than women, and that younger people have higher rates of alcohol and drug use than older people. So if an industry is dominated by young or male workers, it might stand to reason that you’d observe higher rates of drinking and drug use in that industry.

That researchers write that one reason miners drink so much is that miners tend to be young and male. Construction workers, on the other hand, showed abnormally high heavy drinking rates even after controlling for age and gender. If some of that alcohol use is spilling over on to the job it could be a problem, given the dangerous nature of that work.

However, the researchers found no such difference in the distribution of drug use across the industries even when controlling for age and gender. Whether young or old, male or female, restaurant and hotel workers were unequivocally the heaviest drug users in the sample.