Marijuana workforce to triple by 2025
One estimate expects 630,000 to find employment in the cannabis industry
Rod McClelland used to be a barber. Then, he trained to be a glass cutter. But he never would have guessed where his cutting skills would take him next.
“I went from cutting hair, to cutting glass, to cutting buds,” he says.
McClelland, 42, trims marijuana flowers full time in Desert Hot Springs, a California town that has fully embraced the legal pot industry. And he’s one of thousands of people employed by cannabis businesses today in the United States.
When McClelland told his old barbershop buddies in Long Beach about his new scissor slinging gig, they had one big question.
“They were like, ‘How can I get into the business?’ ” he said.
The number of people employed by the cannabis industry is set to triple to 630,000 by 2025, by one estimate. These workers are entry-level hires such as McClelland, trying out the marijuana business for the first time. They’re experienced growers who oversee hundreds of plants at a time. And they’re chefs concocting pot-infused candies and pastries.
That’s to say nothing of the thousands of workers who depend on the pot industry for their livelihoods even if they never touch the plant, such as security guards who watch over pot shops and lawyers who have built a practice around the legal trade.
Marijuana proponents believe pot businesses can employ and retrain workers who are being laid off as the nation’s manufacturing and retail employment shrinks. Unions such as the Teamsters see the marijuana industry as a promising source of new recruits.
The job numbers seem poised for even more growth after President Trump signaled his approval of the industry, easing fears of a federal crackdown. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, widely seen as a cannabis opponent, in January rescinded Obama-era policies protecting marijuana companies that operate legally under state law. But on April 13, a Republican senator said Trump assured him the federal government will respect state law on pot.
Legal weed, job creator
You can already find a job in the marijuana business in about half of all U.S. states. And the industry is growing across the country.
By 2021, Arcview Market Research and BDS Analytics predict that cannabis job creation in California will explode to 99,000 people, making it more than three times the size of the marijuana workforce of Colorado.
Those numbers actually understate how many people are employed thanks to legal weed. Like any other business, pot companies need financial expertise, legal counsel, real estate advice and myriad other professional services.
That’s an opportunity John Dillinger, a former IRS auditor turned marijuana CPA in California, has used to grow a pot-adjacent private practice.
Over the past eight years, the 59year-old accountant has catered to cannabis customers, a sphere he says some CPAs avoid. Today, 20% of his clients are in the pot business.
“One of the local clients that contacted me was just so excited to find a CPA that would work with them,” he said.
But there’s an even bigger impact, analysts like to argue. People in states where medical or adult-use cannabis is legal can also thank the pot business for boosting demand for local goods and services — spurring more developers to hire construction workers and more coffee shops to bring on baristas.
Combining all three groups — direct jobs such as budtending, indirect jobs such as accounting and induced jobs such as construction — Arcview/BDS counted more than 170,000 jobs in the U.S. in 2017 that wouldn’t exist if not for the cannabis industry.
The typical employee at a marijuana company is young, white and male, with at least some college education.
That’s according to recent research at Colorado State University, which surveyed 214 cannabis workers in Colorado. Those findings, at least as far as age and gender are concerned, jibe with what one Denver human resources firm has observed in the cannabis industry, too. The company Faces HCM recruits workers and runs HR for cannabis companies.
Rolling back marijuana
For now, Trump has signaled he’ll respect state laws legalizing pot. But if the administration should reverse itself again, the results would be striking. Counting folks who don’t work directly in the industry, if the whole industry disappeared tomorrow, 170,000 jobs would dry up. That’s the equivalent of every agriculture job in the state of Colorado disappearing.
Of course, it’s hard to imagine that the federal government could or would wipe out the legal marijuana industry completely. “They would have thousands of arrests that they’d have to make,” said Dale Gieringer, Director of marijuana advocacy group Cal NORML. “It would be a huge project for them to undertake.”