With cannabis now fully legal in 24 states and the District of Columbia, the industry has now become a job creator and has led to a number of programs to help develop a trained workforce in the growing, cultivating, harvesting, and selling of marijuana for medicinal and recreational use.
“There is definitely a viable career here,” says Beau Whitney, an economist for the hemp and cannabis industry. As of early 2024, there were more than 440,000 full time jobs, a 5.4% bump in the number of legal cannabis jobs from the year before. Industry experts consider that an indication of recovery and growth after a downturn coming out of the pandemic.
Starting in 2014, when Colorado and Washington opened the first legal adult-use stores, cannabis was considered America’s fastest-growing industry. The upswing in job openings soared through COVID, when cannabis was considered an essential industry. But then the world settled into a new normal in 2022.
“Once the COVID restrictions eased, and once there was less working from home – or working from stoned, as I call it – people started going back into the office. There wasn’t as much need for labor and sales actually declined,” Whitney says.
Cooling investments, inflation, increasing interest rates, and more supply than demand led to layoffs in some existing markets. In 2023, new-to-cannabis states in the Midwest and Northeast led the workforce and revenue rebound. For example, Michigan created 11,000 new jobs and Missouri added 10,735 in the industry.
Cannabis is a First Choice Career, Not a ‘Pivot’
“The vast majority of the people I know pivoted into it, but I think we’re going to see more people starting off (in cannabis) as the industry matures,” says Aaron Smith, co-founder and chief executive officer of the National Cannabis Industry Association.
“There wasn’t really much of an industry 15 years ago, or even 10 years ago. We’re seeing more people that are coming straight out of college and going into cannabis,” Smith adds.
According to Whitney, when workers come into the industry, they will find wages more competitive than ever, even at the entry level. He says, in the past, “you were more inclined to have a living wage in the cannabis sector than you were in the minimum wage jobs.” Now, he says, because the service sector has raised minimum wages recently in many states, cannabis operators are paying higher wages to attract workers.
Cannabis Industry Workers Fill Many Roles
At the entry level, starting around $15 an hour, cultivation, delivery and retail roles make up the largest categories of jobs. This includes bud tenders, trimmers, and drivers. Dispensaries also have security roles, both physical security and compliance officers. Manufacturing jobs are common.
Whitney says he has seen high demand for ancillary professionals – such as accounting, marketing, and office administration – and those with specialty backgrounds such as chemists with a cultivating background who create the formulations for edibles, and dieticians who work with recipes.
These higher educated and skilled labor roles attract higher pay. He’s also seeing c-suite executives transition into the industry finding success collaborating with cannabis “traditionalists.” A company he worked with grew its monthly revenue from $100,000 a month to $2 million, he says.
“For example, I was the CEO of a vertically integrated cannabis company and they had long roots into the legacy market. To a certain extent, they viewed me as the corporate guy because I used to work at Intel,” Whitney says. “I was able to prove to them that I was worthy in their legacy sense. The legacy guys were the ones I learned the most from because they’re very malleable, they can pivot, they’re always trying to find ways around things, and knew the market extremely well. I learned a lot about the market from them.”
Some States are Offering Training to Potential Workers in the Cannabis Industry
Anyone interested in working in cannabis will find more than a hundred degree and certification programs at colleges and universities, and private companies. As some states legalize cannabis, they have also built in training programs to capture and develop homegrown talent.
For example, Maryland currently has 150 cannabis businesses operating in the state and more than 8,000 Marylanders or transplants currently work in the industry. Voters approved shifting cannabis use from medical-only to adult recreational use, too. This enabled disproportionately impacted individuals to apply to be operators, and expand a workforce training program to staff licensees. So far this year, 205 additional licenses have been awarded.
“Across the nation, the war on drugs had a devastating impact on marginalized communities. Maryland, along with a small number of states, has taken the lead on working to repair some of that harm and take a restorative justice approach to business licenses and ownership opportunities in the cannabis industry,” says Kara Hunt, Ph.D., chief enterprise officer for the Maryland Cannabis Administration’s Resource, Enterprise and Diversity Investment Division.
The state’s training program just launched and had 450 applicants to start. Close to half were accepted, and more are expected on a rolling basis. The virtual academy kicked off in September and a two-day occupational training opportunity will run once a month starting in November to April at community colleges across Maryland.
The program trains applicants for pre- and post-harvest cultivation jobs, front and back-of-house retail roles, lab sciences and tech roles, and more. The training is free for those accepted into the program.
“There’s been an exponential increase in need for workers. We meet employees often when we go out to the facilities who maybe worked in Colorado, and now they’ve come and relocated to Maryland to work here, or they were in Massachusetts or New York and found a job opportunity here, which means that those opportunities are not necessarily going to Maryland citizens,” Hunt says.
“It’s a brand new industry, which means you don’t find very many incumbent workers, and that’s a tax on the operators themselves, because then they have to train. It’s far cheaper to bring someone from another state. But there are workers here in Maryland who need training. There are agricultural positions, and some of it can be hazardous, working with solvents and processing the plant,” she explains.
“People have a tendency to think that working in the cannabis industry is just really cool, and they’re going to hang out. It may not be as glamorous as people think, and we are bringing diversity to the industry and ensuring that Marylanders who are seeking jobs in the cannabis industry are prepared to get those jobs.”
Forecast: Job Growth in the Industry Will Continue
Looking ahead, Aaron Smith of the National Cannabis Industry Association anticipates nationwide growth once there’s federal legalization for interstate commerce, and potentially international commerce. He expects that to happen within the next five years, enabling companies to scale and create new job categories.
For now, he encourages more states to take the first step to legalize access within their borders.
“They’re missing out on tens of thousands of jobs in each of these states. They’re missing out on that job growth opportunity, taxes, and savings on law enforcement expenses from playing Whac-a-Mole – going after illegal operators which is not curbing use,” Smith says.
“I think that there are good opportunities in this space,” economic Beau Whitney adds, noting Ohio, New York, New Jersey and Maryland will have the most job opportunities in the coming year. “It’s always important, though, to have a plan B.”
