US Department of Labor awards $1.8M in funding for employment, training services to combat New York’s opioid crisis

WASHINGTON – Fatal overdoses in New York have nearly tripled in the last decade, with nearly 85 percent of them linked to controlled substances, including opioids. Nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates fatal opioid overdoses kill 91 people each day in the U.S.

To help combat its opioid crisis, the U.S. Department of Labor today announced the award of $1,863,816 in incremental funding to the New York State Department of Labor to support job creation and workforce training services in 22 localities. The award will serve individuals in communities where widespread opioid use, addiction and overdose have had significant social and economic impacts including the counties of Clinton, Columbia, Duchess, Essex, Franklin, Greene, Hamilton, Herkimer, Madison, Monroe, Nassau (the City of Long Beach and the Town of Hempstead), Oneida, Ontario, Onondaga, Orange, Putnam, Seneca, Suffolk, Sullivan, Wayne, Westchester and Yates.

Administered by the department’s Employment and Training Administration, the award is the third and final allocation of a $5.6 million National Health Emergency Dislocated Worker Grant initially awarded in January 2019. State officials estimate the award will help create jobs and provide workforce training for approximately 700 people.

Supported by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014, Opioid Disaster Recovery Dislocated Worker Grants create temporary jobs in peer recovery positions and provide services to reintegrate workers affected by the opioid crisis back into the workforce.

In 2021, the CDC determined fatal overdoses claimed more than 2,857 lives in New York, with 2,420 attributed to opioids. An estimated 1,000 people there died by overdose in 2010, 70 percent of them blamed on controlled substances. In October 2017, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency.

Learn more from the National Institute on Drug Abuse about overdose deaths in New York.