Putting out a call to action for Bay State business leaders, a Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation report out Wednesday endeavors to understand the economic scale and scope of the opioid epidemic that has ravaged communities and killed thousands.

The ongoing crisis of opioid misuse and overdose deaths has also had a “severe” impact on Massachusetts businesses, MTF’s report found, costing employers $2.7 billion a year in lost productivity among workers and an estimated $2.1 billion in excess health care costs related to opioid usage.

“The economic and fiscal impacts of the opioid epidemic on the state are enormous and its growth is rapid and relentless,” the business-backed fiscal watchdog organization wrote. “Absent a curtailment of opioid misuse and overdose deaths, the state faces an unprecedented constraint to growth.”

MTF said that in a tight Bay State labor market, the opioid epidemic has made it even harder to find workers to fill jobs as businesses try to expand.

“The tens of thousands more prime age people lost to the workforce due to the opioid crisis is yet another stiff headwind businesses must overcome in order to expand and prosper,” the group wrote in its report.

In the last seven years, opioids have kept an estimated 32,700 people from participating in the Massachusetts labor force. Another 143,000 people who have a job -- 4.2 percent of those employed in the state -- reported pain reliever misuse and average an extra 18 more days off from work than those who do not misuse prescription pain medications, MTF said.

Since 2011, Massachusetts has averaged $5.9 billion in annual productivity lost due to people being kept from the workforce because of the effects of the opioid crisis. That annual loss is equal to about 1.27 percent of total gross state product and is three times as great as the lost productivity in 2000, MTF said.

The state budget has also felt the effects of the opioid epidemic. According to MTF, 90,000 MassHealth members received services related to an opioid use disorder in 2017, with 70,000 of them relying on MassHealth as their primary payer. Using an average cost of $12,317 per patient per year, MTF estimated that MassHealth spent $860 million on opioid-related costs for patients with opioid use disorder treatment in 2017.

The Department of Public Health, which supports treatment and prevention services for substance use, has seen its total annual budget double to $136 million between 2001 and 2017 while spending from its Bureau of Substance Addiction Services has more than tripled during the same time period, MTF said.

“The trajectory of opioid-related spending in Massachusetts is more alarming than the total amount and provides a grim testament to the impact of the epidemic over the last several years,” MTF wrote. “For example, between 2012 and 2017, Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) spending rose by 62 percent, while MassHealth spending on services and medications rose by more than 30 percent.”

The report, funded by the anti-addiction non-profit Rize Massachusetts, was released ahead of an MTF forum planned for Friday morning, at which Gov. Charlie Baker, Attorney General Maura Healey and Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders are expected to detail their efforts to combat the opioid crisis and how the effects of the crisis have spread throughout the state.

MTF said it conducted its research on how the opioid crisis has affected businesses, in part, to encourage business leaders to become more involved in combating the problem.

“MTF hopes this report catalyzes greater urgency and engagement from all segments of our society in the battle against the scourge of this epidemic -- particularly among Massachusetts employers -- by exploring and explaining the economic and fiscal impacts of the opioid epidemic on the state,” the group wrote. “We have no illusions that this crisis is fundamentally about economics. While the opioid epidemic is causing considerable costs across all major systems in our state, the primary costs of this crisis are its impact on human lives – and these are incalculable.”

Through the first six months of 2018, there were 657 confirmed opioid-related overdose deaths in Massachusetts and the Department of Public Health estimates that an additional 322 to 396 deaths will be confirmed as opioid-related overdose deaths. Fresh data is due later this month from DPH.

Overall opioid deaths fell from 2,154 in 2016 to 2,071 in 2017 -- a 4 percent decrease -- but the DPH data release in August logged a new high in the prevalence of fentanyl. In the first quarter of 2018, fentanyl was found in 89 percent of opioid-related overdose deaths where a toxicology screen occurred, up from about 40 percent in 2014.