The soon to be largest recreational cannabis market will soon become the largest cannabis job creator.
According to ZipRecruiter, an online job search hub, two cities in California, Los Angeles, and San Francisco have advertised the most cannabis-related jobs of any legal marketplace.
“When it comes to growth in this industry, we see the most significant growth in states that recently loosened their marijuana laws,” ZipRecruiter’s report said.
The report highlighted the fact that cannabis is outpacing the growth of other industries.
“Our data also shows that the cannabis industry is growing more rapidly than some of today’s fastest-growing fields. Year over year growth of job posts in the cannabis industry is outpacing both tech (254% growth) and healthcare (70% growth)— by some reports, there are 14% more legal marijuana workers than there are dental hygienists in the U.S.” the report said.
ZipRecruiter found that in the final quarter of 2017, just before recreational cannabis was set to become legal on Jan. 1, the growth was especially pronounced.
“Our Q4 data for 2017 revealed an especially dramatic leap in the number of new cannabis industry job posts. The number of cannabis industry job posts increased 693% year over year and 79% quarter over quarter. This impressive growth can probably be attributed to SMBs preparing for the kick-off of retail cannabis sales in Q1 of 2018 in huge markets like California,” Ziprecruiter said in the report.
While California has a deeply rooted culture of cannabis use and cultivation, the growth of the industry is expected to be universal. According to Forbes, the industry will be worth $31.8 billion worldwide by 2021.
But what if the federal government legalized cannabis? If given access to banking, and a proper regulatory stucture, the cannabis industry could “create $132 billion in federal tax revenue and inject over a million jobs into the US labor market by 2025 if it becomes legal nationwide,” Business Insider reported using data from New Frontier Data, a cannabis analytics firm.
With bitter partisan debate over how to fund the government and whether or not social services like medicare, medicaid, foodstamps and other progams will remain funded, the trend of legalizing cannabis could be happening at just the right time. While legal cannabis cannot cure all financial woes, like its effectiveness as a medicine, it seems positioned to provide relief in the form of additional tax revenues and jobs.
