There are now more people earning a living from the existence of the legal cannabis trade than there are dental hygienists and bakers, according to a new report from Marijuana Business Daily.
Now that marijuana is legal for medicinal and recreational purposes in more than half the nation, the industry responsible for the cultivation and sale of this product needs significant manpower to keep its daily operations afloat. The latest data shows that, even though the federal government still considers marijuana an outlaw substance, its legalization at the state level has contributed to somewhere between 165,000 and 235,000 new jobs.
The latest figures are impressive, especially considering that the blue-collar nation has struggled for the past several years to find replacements for jobs swept away by the decay of the manufacturing sector.
Most of the positions made available by the legalization of marijuana pull from a wide scale pool of professional experience ranging from those folks once employed in retail sales to people well versed in the sciences.
These are positions that start at well above the nation’s measly minimum wage. A report published last year by the Washington Post shows that workers employed by the cannabis industry are earning anywhere between $15-$20 per hour, with some of the more skilled laborers, like grow masters and store managers, taking home in upwards of $75,000 to $100,000 per year.
Although the business of marijuana has a long way to go before it reaches employment numbers comparable to the alcohol trade (nearly 4 million jobs nationwide), the latest data shows just how important the cannabis industry could be to the success of the America worker.
Not only is legal weed providing hundreds of thousands of families all across the country with an opportunity to carve out a life beyond the poverty level, it is also improving the lives of those people who earn their way in more traditional lines of work.
Contractors specializing in everything from construction to heating & air conditioning are now being hired to assemble the various components of the cannabis industry. This means thousands of people are being put to work in areas that have legalized the leaf that may have otherwise struggled to survive.
In fact, in Colorado, Pueblo County Commissioner Sal Pace recently told The Boston Globe that around “40 percent of all construction permits countywide have been attributed to the cannabis industry.”
It is for this reason that some of the nation’s more downtrodden communities, those that have been left for dead in the wake of vanishing factory and warehouse positions, are now fighting for an opportunity to bring the cannabis industry to their neck of the woods.
Incidentally, President Donald Trump has promised to create 25 million new jobs within the next decade. Yet, his administration remains adamantly opposed to a government that allows marijuana to be taxed and regulated in a manner similar to alcohol and tobacco.
