Leafly, in partnership with Whitney Economics, has released its sixth annual Cannabis Jobs Report.
the Leafly Jobs Report 2022which looked at the 11 states where adult cannabis is legal in the United States and the 27 states where medical cannabis is allowed, finds that jobs in the cannabis sector increased by 33% in 2021.
According to Leafly, 2021 is the fifth consecutive year the industry has experienced an annual growth rate above 27%. Additionally, the analysis found that the cannabis industry currently employs 428,059 Americans and generated nearly $25 billion in sales last year, or about a quarter of the total cannabis market expected in the country.
The report also predicts that the US cannabis industry will one day employ between 1.5 and 1.75 million people, almost four times more than today, and that the sector will generate around $45 billion in annual sales. by 2025.
The 428,059 full-time jobs cover a wide variety of cannabis-related roles, from “plant-touching” jobs like cultivation and retail, to ancillary jobs like accounting, legal, security or construction. In 2021, employment in the cannabis industry was estimated at 321,000 jobs, up from 122,800 in 2017, the first year Leafly released its report.
“In the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. cannabis industry sold nearly $25 billion worth of products and created over 107,000 new jobs – enough to fill the Rose Bowl and more” , says the report in its introduction.
“This represents a 33% increase in jobs in a single year. And this is the fifth consecutive year of annual employment growth above 27%. No other industry in America can compete with this. Last year, the US legal cannabis industry created more than 280 new jobs every day. In 2021, someone was hired for a cannabis-supported job every two minutes or so of the workday. »
The report also provides other means of comparison to put things into perspective, including the fact that there are three times as many cannabis workers as dentists in the United States and that there are more people working in cannabis that there are no hairdressers, barbers and beauticians combined.
The report also presents the top ten cannabis markets by employment, namely California, Colorado, Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania (only for medical purposes), Florida (only for medical purposes), Arizona, Washington and Oregon.
However, the report also recommends that people who would like to find jobs in the cannabis field, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York are full opportunities, such as potential for market novelty or mature markets with a competing illegal market.
The authors of the report estimate that these numbers will only increase in the years to come.
“In the eight years since the nation’s first adult-use cannabis stores opened, the industry has created hundreds of thousands of new American jobs. And there are still many more to create. Whitney Economics calculates that the total cannabis sales figure in 2021 – just under $25 billion – represents only about 25% of the total potential cannabis market in the United States,” the report states. He goes on to say that 75% of the cannabis industry’s demand is met through illegal cultivation and sale, and that by 2025 the cannabis industry could be worth up to $45 billion.
