CBD OIL

AL: Some of the ways that they’re similar is that there is a gigantic opportunity and resource gap between small minority businesses and some of the larger operators. When you are entering a heavily regulated, capital-intensive industry, there is a gigantic learning curve in terms of making the connections you need to within the supply chain, the technical compliance issues, and even just some of the foundational business knowledge that in the communities that have been most impacted by prohibition are not always there or accessible. And I would say that carries through to the hemp industry as well. I would say the one major difference there is that while access to capital is an issue in the hemp industry, it is an extraordinary issue when it comes to the cannabis industry and to federal prohibition on lending to cannabis businesses.

PW: In states where cannabis is fully legal and state-legal programs are set up, could you talk about what social equity programs are doing right and what they’re doing wrong?

As retailers accept the end of in-store shopping as we know it and start adjusting to e-commerce, an improved and more involved customer experience will be imperative for an e-retailer to grow, let alone stay afloat.

Jane recently announced a strategic partnership that combines Jane’s best-in-class product catalog and business tools with Leafly’s consumer marketplace and reach. Together, the companies will build solutions that empower cannabis retailers with fast and simple online shopping experiences that increase consumer purchase behavior. The partnership will seek to help instill consumer trust in the online shopping experience, build stronger customer acquisition tools for retailers, and help dispensaries grow their ecommerce capabilities with consistency and automation.

This strategic partnership comes after a massive year of growth for both Jane and Leafly. In the past year, Jane powered over 17 million orders and $2 billion in cannabis sales, while Leafly has seen more than 4,500 cannabis retailers in North America leverage their platform to bring new customers through the door.

We spoke with Socrates Rosenfeld, CEO of Jane to learn more about e-commerce and online marketplaces and how Jane and Leafly came together as partners, rather than competitors. Prior to Jane, Socrates was an Apache helicopter pilot for the US Army later transitioning to consulting with McKinsey.

Aaron Green: Socrates, thanks for taking the time today. What trends are you seeing and following in the industry?

Socrates Rosenfeld: Always happy to chat about the industry. Thanks for having me.

If you were to ask me that question a year ago, I’d say having a digital footprint was something that would give a dispensary or a brand a nice advantage. Today, it’s a must-have for survival. Where it used to be one or the other; online or offline, now we are able to merge the two by replicating a physical store into a digitized form to extend its reach far beyond its walls.

As things become more digitized, information becomes more necessary to run operations. With that we are able to meet the expectations of the consumers who are accustomed to convenience and curation. The omnichannel experience provides the best of both worlds. Access and ease of search with the ability to pick up or have the product delivered the same day from a locally owned and run business.

Reviews are one of the most important aspects of this unification of online and offline. It is something that is lost in solely offline purchases, that we’re now able to collect and organize. This product information allows us to provide customers the purchasing power to make a well-informed decision.

At Jane, we believe it is possible to create wins for the dispensaries, brands and customers – and digitization creates the opportunity for that to happen. I think there’s no better incubator in the world than the cannabis industry to prove that online and offline retail can work in harmony.

Aaron: Jane is the largest e-commerce platform in North American cannabis and Leafly is the largest marketplace in North American cannabis. What’s the difference between an e-commerce platform and a marketplace?

Socrates: Great question. There is definitely some overlap between the two, which is why it makes so much sense for us to collaborate. Ultimately though, our focus and expertise are different. Jane’s ecommerce platform serves as the industry’s digital infrastructure that pushes digital products across various order origination points like a dispensary’s own website, a brand’s own website and now, Leafly’s marketplace. Paired with Leafly’s industry-leading content and market information, together we can complete the entire online cannabis shopping experience – from product discovery through order fulfillment.

Aaron: At first glance, one might think that Jane and Leafly are competitors. How did you see it differently? And how did this partnership come about?

Socrates: Not only is our tech complementary, but we are aligned on mission – to empower consumers, dispensaries and brands with the integrity of the plant in mind.

We want to make it simple for consumers to reach the products that will be most helpful for them. We want to make it possible for dispensaries and brands, regardless of their size, to be able to compete on an even playing field.

It all comes back to being good stewards of the industry. Education and access create a healthy demand for a diverse range of products. That means that the plant stays in the hands of many – safeguarding it from homogenization.

Aaron: How do consumers benefit from the partnership?

Socrates: It really is all about bringing this industry in line with any other retail vertical and meeting the customer where they are. It unlocks more avenues for customers to discover products and access a vast catalog of information and verified customer reviews. Bottom line, this partnership makes shopping for cannabis as simple as shopping online for everything else in the world, while also ensuring the success of the sellers.

Aaron: When you say the sellers, are you talking about the dispensary or the brands?

Socrates: Both, we want to provide value for the entire ecosystem. We can do that directly for dispensaries and brands by enabling an automated ecommerce platform that they can use to power their own website. At Jane, we know that technology can unlock value for everyone, where it is not a zero-sum game and success for one means success for the other. With Jane, both the dispensaries and the brands win.

Aaron: What kind of regulatory challenges do you face through the partnership?

Socrates: There are no real regulatory challenges for the partnership itself. The entire industry operates under regulatory challenges, but it is those regulations that have been the catalyst for innovation. I see the opportunity for legal online payments and national product distribution to play a large role in shaping the industry soon, and a partnership like this will ensure a seamless transition for the industry as things continue to evolve.

Aaron: Final question. What are you personally interested in learning more about?

Socrates: I’ve always been curious about disruptive models. The companies, not just in tech, but any company that has set out to do things differently and has been able to hold true to a vision. That’s what interests me, and I think I will always have something to learn and draw inspiration from. 

Aaron: Excellent, that’s the end of the interview, Socrates!

Socrates: Thanks, Aaron.

Shannon Price | Adobe Stock

Job growth in the cannabis sector doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

The legal cannabis industry now supports 321,000 workers in the United States, with 77,000-plus jobs created in 2020, or roughly a 32% increase across the 37 states and the District of Columbia with medical or adult-use markets, according to a report by Leafly.

While cannabis companies were not immune to layoffs and furloughs during the onset of COVID-19, as job growth experienced a lull between March and August, hiring picked back up, and many operations thrived during the pandemic. The year-over-year growth showed that the cannabis sector created jobs at a faster rate than almost any other American industry, according to Leafly.

James Yagielo, the CEO of HempStaff, a recruiting and training company based in Miami that specializes in the cannabis and hemp industries, said the 32% increase reported by Leafly did not leave him open-mouthed. 

“It was not really that surprising because it was essential business, so that really narrowed down a lot of the different industries because a lot of industries are not essential,” he said. “So, I think that may have definitely skewed the numbers in cannabis’ favor. But, additionally, even though last year was a horrendous year for most people, our recruiting numbers pretty much matched 2019. We didn’t get the increase we expected, but we didn’t really get decrease either.”

When September 2020 hit, job growth picked back up in the sector, Yagielo said.

“We’ve kind of had a boom, say, post Labor Day in the cannabis industry in hiring that to [this] day is still going on,” he said. “So, while we did have that few-months lull, it really picked back up once they realized that the cannabis industry was not going to be hurt by the pandemic.”

The 32% increase in job growth in the cannabis sector came at a time when the broader U.S. economy shrank by 3.5% in 2020, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Although the cannabis industry may have appeared recession-proof to some, Vangst, a Denver-based recruiting platform that connects cannabis job seekers with employees, reported 80% of its clients had to lay off or furlough employees when stay-at-home orders rolled out at the onset of COVID-19, CEO Karson Humiston said.

“Nobody knew how the cannabis industry would respond to really its first economic downturn,” she said. “And, at the end of the day, cannabis was deemed essential and businesses did well, and people continued purchasing, consuming cannabis, but nobody knew that that would happen. And, so, capital stopped blowing into the space, which is a big driver of expansion, and businesses really kind of reined in their growth and expansion plans to see how the year would shake out.”

By the end of the year, companies were back on track with their hiring plans, Humiston said.

“Fortunately, the year went great and the election results were great, and I think that’s setting us up for huge, huge, huge growth potential in 2021 and beyond for jobs and cannabis,” she said.

With the hiring increase experienced in 2020, the U.S. cannabis industry now supports nearly as many jobs as there are firefighters in the country, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As employment continues to heat up, so are salaries and benefits in the sector, Humiston said. According to Vangst’s 2020 Cannabis Industry Salary Guide released last month, 83% of cannabis companies Vangst surveyed offer paid-time off, 73% offer medical insurance, 63% offer dental insurance, 62% offer vision insurance, 28% offer equity or stock options and 29% offer 401(k) plans—a more than 10% year-over-year increase.

“You have to remember the cannabis industry is a startup,” Humiston said. “The entire industry is a startup. This is one of the most immature market industries in the country, and yet they’re providing these great benefits and every year they keep on getting better. And, so, I think this industry is doing a great job in terms of how it’s paying its employees and in terms of the benefits that it’s providing.”

According to Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary’s recent Best Cannabis Companies To Work For research, many employees are not satisfied with their pay and benefits, according to anonymous questionnaires distributed to teams of companies that applied to be in the program. The feedback showed 65% of cultivation employees at Best Cannabis Companies said they agreed their pay was fair for the work they perform, while that number was 59% for companies that applied but did not rank. Those numbers were 78% for dispensary employees working for top companies and 60% for others.

Budtenders, trimmers/post harvesters, packagers and delivery drivers in the 15 select states surveyed in Vangst’s guide made an average wage of $15 to $16 per hour, while some of the higher-paid jobs, like vice presidents of retail operations, manufacturing or sales, and directors of cultivation or extraction, all earned averaged salaries in the range of $105,000 to $160,000.

At HempStaff, Yagielo said the biggest increase in salary his company has noticed is for testing lab managers.

“There’s a lot of testing labs across the country trying to get online, when there’s not a lot of people that are your high-level Ph.D. scientists to get a lab set up,” he said. “So, we’ve seen, you know, salaries of lab managers go up above the $200,000-a-year mark recently. They’re usually looking for a Ph.D. in chemistry or something along those lines.”

When new states enact medical or adult-use cannabis programs, there’s often a big rush to relocate top-level managers to those states, whether it be for cultivation, extraction, manufacturing, retail or testing lab operations, Yagielo said. And once those people are relocated, then they start hiring their staff locally, he said.

“And these newer states tend to bump up salaries to entice people, because you’re going to have not as many growers that want to leave a state like Colorado, that’s totally legal, to go to a Mississippi, [which just passed medical cannabis legalization in the November 2020 election],” Yagielo said.

According to Leafly, more than 35,500 Coloradans are employed by the cannabis industry, where sales began in 2014 and raked in $2.2 billion in 2020. Colorado is only outdone by California, which supported roughly 58,000 cannabis jobs in a $4.4 billion market in 2020.

In New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation Feb. 22 to legalize adult-use cannabis following voters’ approval of the constitutional amendment, job numbers are estimated to grow by 25,000 in the sector during the first year it enacts a program, Humiston said.

“That’s a lot of brand-new jobs being created, in addition to all the tax revenue that’s being created,” she said. “I mean, cannabis creates jobs, period, and helps communities help people get to work.”

When asked if some of the more mature markets, like Colorado and California, will level off with future job growth, Humiston said she doesn’t see that happening anytime soon.

“The beauty is that more and more consumers are coming into the market every year,” she said. “There’s a whole population of people that haven’t tried cannabis yet. As those consumers continue to become customers, the businesses continue growing. And, so, we’ve certainly seen a level of consolidation, but, if you look at the market trends, the market has continued to grow every single year since it legalized. And as the market grows, meaning just general cannabis sales, there’s a need for more employees.”

With the need for more employees comes the need for job-seeking candidates, who are not on short supply for many entry-level positions. Yagielo said he sees anywhere from 100 to 300 resumes for each job opening, with the number ranging on the high end for budtender positions. But future demand could come by way of factory jobs, he said.

While cannabis job growth has continued to boom, the United States’ industrial hemp industry has leveled off in the past year or so because of market saturation without enough factories to support it, Yagielo said.

“Until you have more of those factories, unfortunately, there is a lot of hemp just getting moldy in people’s barns,” he said. “When [more infrastructure is created], I think your job market is going to explode, because factories need thousands of people to run them.”

Both Humiston and Yagielo said there’s a direct correlation between more capital entering the space and increased hiring in the industry.

In addition to more states coming on board with cannabis legalization, financing options at the federal level would bring a new round of capital into the industry, Humiston said. The Secure And Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act—proposed legislation regarding the disposition of funds gained through the cannabis industry in the U.S.—would open those doors, she said.

In other words, some companies that have the financial wherewithal to join space in the industry haven’t yet pulled the trigger without fiscal confidence at the federal level.

“I think the other big factor outside of states becoming legalized is businesses having access to capital,” Humiston said. “As businesses can take on more traditional financing options, that will allow them to grow and expand and hire more people. So, I think SAFE Banking is a big bill that everybody’s kind of paying attention to, hoping that that pushes through.

“And then just as more investors get comfortable with the space, capital will lead to growth, which the No. 1 thing people do when they grow is hire.”

Shannon Price | Adobe Stock

Job growth in the cannabis sector doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

The legal cannabis industry now supports 321,000 workers in the United States, with 77,000-plus jobs created in 2020, or roughly a 32% increase across the 37 states and the District of Columbia with medical or adult-use markets, according to a report by Leafly.

While cannabis companies were not immune to layoffs and furloughs during the onset of COVID-19, as job growth experienced a lull between March and August, hiring picked back up, and many operations thrived during the pandemic. The year-over-year growth showed that the cannabis sector created jobs at a faster rate than almost any other American industry, according to Leafly.

James Yagielo, the CEO of HempStaff, a recruiting and training company based in Miami that specializes in the cannabis and hemp industries, said the 32% increase reported by Leafly did not leave him open-mouthed. 

“It was not really that surprising because it was essential business, so that really narrowed down a lot of the different industries because a lot of industries are not essential,” he said. “So, I think that may have definitely skewed the numbers in cannabis’ favor. But, additionally, even though last year was a horrendous year for most people, our recruiting numbers pretty much matched 2019. We didn’t get the increase we expected, but we didn’t really get decrease either.”

When September 2020 hit, job growth picked back up in the sector, Yagielo said.

“We’ve kind of had a boom, say, post Labor Day in the cannabis industry in hiring that to [this] day is still going on,” he said. “So, while we did have that few-months lull, it really picked back up once they realized that the cannabis industry was not going to be hurt by the pandemic.”

The 32% increase in job growth in the cannabis sector came at a time when the broader U.S. economy shrank by 3.5% in 2020, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Although the cannabis industry may have appeared recession-proof to some, Vangst, a Denver-based recruiting platform that connects cannabis job seekers with employees, reported 80% of its clients had to lay off or furlough employees when stay-at-home orders rolled out at the onset of COVID-19, CEO Karson Humiston said.

“Nobody knew how the cannabis industry would respond to really its first economic downturn,” she said. “And, at the end of the day, cannabis was deemed essential and businesses did well, and people continued purchasing, consuming cannabis, but nobody knew that that would happen. And, so, capital stopped blowing into the space, which is a big driver of expansion, and businesses really kind of reined in their growth and expansion plans to see how the year would shake out.”

By the end of the year, companies were back on track with their hiring plans, Humiston said.

“Fortunately, the year went great and the election results were great, and I think that’s setting us up for huge, huge, huge growth potential in 2021 and beyond for jobs and cannabis,” she said.

With the hiring increase experienced in 2020, the U.S. cannabis industry now supports nearly as many jobs as there are firefighters in the country, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As employment continues to heat up, so are salaries and benefits in the sector, Humiston said. According to Vangst’s 2020 Cannabis Industry Salary Guide released last month, 83% of cannabis companies Vangst surveyed offer paid-time off, 73% offer medical insurance, 63% offer dental insurance, 62% offer vision insurance, 28% offer equity or stock options and 29% offer 401(k) plans—a more than 10% year-over-year increase.

“You have to remember the cannabis industry is a startup,” Humiston said. “The entire industry is a startup. This is one of the most immature market industries in the country, and yet they’re providing these great benefits and every year they keep on getting better. And, so, I think this industry is doing a great job in terms of how it’s paying its employees and in terms of the benefits that it’s providing.”

According to Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary’s recent Best Cannabis Companies To Work For research, many employees are not satisfied with their pay and benefits, according to anonymous questionnaires distributed to teams of companies that applied to be in the program. The feedback showed 65% of cultivation employees at Best Cannabis Companies said they agreed their pay was fair for the work they perform, while that number was 59% for companies that applied but did not rank. Those numbers were 78% for dispensary employees working for top companies and 60% for others.

Budtenders, trimmers/post harvesters, packagers and delivery drivers in the 15 select states surveyed in Vangst’s guide made an average wage of $15 to $16 per hour, while some of the higher-paid jobs, like vice presidents of retail operations, manufacturing or sales, and directors of cultivation or extraction, all earned averaged salaries in the range of $105,000 to $160,000.

At HempStaff, Yagielo said the biggest increase in salary his company has noticed is for testing lab managers.

“There’s a lot of testing labs across the country trying to get online, when there’s not a lot of people that are your high-level Ph.D. scientists to get a lab set up,” he said. “So, we’ve seen, you know, salaries of lab managers go up above the $200,000-a-year mark recently. They’re usually looking for a Ph.D. in chemistry or something along those lines.”

When new states enact medical or adult-use cannabis programs, there’s often a big rush to relocate top-level managers to those states, whether it be for cultivation, extraction, manufacturing, retail or testing lab operations, Yagielo said. And once those people are relocated, then they start hiring their staff locally, he said.

“And these newer states tend to bump up salaries to entice people, because you’re going to have not as many growers that want to leave a state like Colorado, that’s totally legal, to go to a Mississippi, [which just passed medical cannabis legalization in the November 2020 election],” Yagielo said.

According to Leafly, more than 35,500 Coloradans are employed by the cannabis industry, where sales began in 2014 and raked in $2.2 billion in 2020. Colorado is only outdone by California, which supported roughly 58,000 cannabis jobs in a $4.4 billion market in 2020.

In New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation Feb. 22 to legalize adult-use cannabis following voters’ approval of the constitutional amendment, job numbers are estimated to grow by 25,000 in the sector during the first year it enacts a program, Humiston said.

“That’s a lot of brand-new jobs being created, in addition to all the tax revenue that’s being created,” she said. “I mean, cannabis creates jobs, period, and helps communities help people get to work.”

When asked if some of the more mature markets, like Colorado and California, will level off with future job growth, Humiston said she doesn’t see that happening anytime soon.

“The beauty is that more and more consumers are coming into the market every year,” she said. “There’s a whole population of people that haven’t tried cannabis yet. As those consumers continue to become customers, the businesses continue growing. And, so, we’ve certainly seen a level of consolidation, but, if you look at the market trends, the market has continued to grow every single year since it legalized. And as the market grows, meaning just general cannabis sales, there’s a need for more employees.”

With the need for more employees comes the need for job-seeking candidates, who are not on short supply for many entry-level positions. Yagielo said he sees anywhere from 100 to 300 resumes for each job opening, with the number ranging on the high end for budtender positions. But future demand could come by way of factory jobs, he said.

While cannabis job growth has continued to boom, the United States’ industrial hemp industry has leveled off in the past year or so because of market saturation without enough factories to support it, Yagielo said.

“Until you have more of those factories, unfortunately, there is a lot of hemp just getting moldy in people’s barns,” he said. “When [more infrastructure is created], I think your job market is going to explode, because factories need thousands of people to run them.”

Both Humiston and Yagielo said there’s a direct correlation between more capital entering the space and increased hiring in the industry.

In addition to more states coming on board with cannabis legalization, financing options at the federal level would bring a new round of capital into the industry, Humiston said. The Secure And Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act—proposed legislation regarding the disposition of funds gained through the cannabis industry in the U.S.—would open those doors, she said.

In other words, some companies that have the financial wherewithal to join space in the industry haven’t yet pulled the trigger without fiscal confidence at the federal level.

“I think the other big factor outside of states becoming legalized is businesses having access to capital,” Humiston said. “As businesses can take on more traditional financing options, that will allow them to grow and expand and hire more people. So, I think SAFE Banking is a big bill that everybody’s kind of paying attention to, hoping that that pushes through.

“And then just as more investors get comfortable with the space, capital will lead to growth, which the No. 1 thing people do when they grow is hire.”

Shannon Price | Adobe Stock

Job growth in the cannabis sector doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

The legal cannabis industry now supports 321,000 workers in the United States, with 77,000-plus jobs created in 2020, or roughly a 32% increase across the 37 states and the District of Columbia with medical or adult-use markets, according to a report by Leafly.

While cannabis companies were not immune to layoffs and furloughs during the onset of COVID-19, as job growth experienced a lull between March and August, hiring picked back up, and many operations thrived during the pandemic. The year-over-year growth showed that the cannabis sector created jobs at a faster rate than almost any other American industry, according to Leafly.

James Yagielo, the CEO of HempStaff, a recruiting and training company based in Miami that specializes in the cannabis and hemp industries, said the 32% increase reported by Leafly did not leave him open-mouthed. 

“It was not really that surprising because it was essential business, so that really narrowed down a lot of the different industries because a lot of industries are not essential,” he said. “So, I think that may have definitely skewed the numbers in cannabis’ favor. But, additionally, even though last year was a horrendous year for most people, our recruiting numbers pretty much matched 2019. We didn’t get the increase we expected, but we didn’t really get decrease either.”

When September 2020 hit, job growth picked back up in the sector, Yagielo said.

“We’ve kind of had a boom, say, post Labor Day in the cannabis industry in hiring that to [this] day is still going on,” he said. “So, while we did have that few-months lull, it really picked back up once they realized that the cannabis industry was not going to be hurt by the pandemic.”

The 32% increase in job growth in the cannabis sector came at a time when the broader U.S. economy shrank by 3.5% in 2020, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Although the cannabis industry may have appeared recession-proof to some, Vangst, a Denver-based recruiting platform that connects cannabis job seekers with employees, reported 80% of its clients had to lay off or furlough employees when stay-at-home orders rolled out at the onset of COVID-19, CEO Karson Humiston said.

“Nobody knew how the cannabis industry would respond to really its first economic downturn,” she said. “And, at the end of the day, cannabis was deemed essential and businesses did well, and people continued purchasing, consuming cannabis, but nobody knew that that would happen. And, so, capital stopped blowing into the space, which is a big driver of expansion, and businesses really kind of reined in their growth and expansion plans to see how the year would shake out.”

By the end of the year, companies were back on track with their hiring plans, Humiston said.

“Fortunately, the year went great and the election results were great, and I think that’s setting us up for huge, huge, huge growth potential in 2021 and beyond for jobs and cannabis,” she said.

With the hiring increase experienced in 2020, the U.S. cannabis industry now supports nearly as many jobs as there are firefighters in the country, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As employment continues to heat up, so are salaries and benefits in the sector, Humiston said. According to Vangst’s 2020 Cannabis Industry Salary Guide released last month, 83% of cannabis companies Vangst surveyed offer paid-time off, 73% offer medical insurance, 63% offer dental insurance, 62% offer vision insurance, 28% offer equity or stock options and 29% offer 401(k) plans—a more than 10% year-over-year increase.

“You have to remember the cannabis industry is a startup,” Humiston said. “The entire industry is a startup. This is one of the most immature market industries in the country, and yet they’re providing these great benefits and every year they keep on getting better. And, so, I think this industry is doing a great job in terms of how it’s paying its employees and in terms of the benefits that it’s providing.”

According to Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary’s recent Best Cannabis Companies To Work For research, many employees are not satisfied with their pay and benefits, according to anonymous questionnaires distributed to teams of companies that applied to be in the program. The feedback showed 65% of cultivation employees at Best Cannabis Companies said they agreed their pay was fair for the work they perform, while that number was 59% for companies that applied but did not rank. Those numbers were 78% for dispensary employees working for top companies and 60% for others.

Budtenders, trimmers/post harvesters, packagers and delivery drivers in the 15 select states surveyed in Vangst’s guide made an average wage of $15 to $16 per hour, while some of the higher-paid jobs, like vice presidents of retail operations, manufacturing or sales, and directors of cultivation or extraction, all earned averaged salaries in the range of $105,000 to $160,000.

At HempStaff, Yagielo said the biggest increase in salary his company has noticed is for testing lab managers.

“There’s a lot of testing labs across the country trying to get online, when there’s not a lot of people that are your high-level Ph.D. scientists to get a lab set up,” he said. “So, we’ve seen, you know, salaries of lab managers go up above the $200,000-a-year mark recently. They’re usually looking for a Ph.D. in chemistry or something along those lines.”

When new states enact medical or adult-use cannabis programs, there’s often a big rush to relocate top-level managers to those states, whether it be for cultivation, extraction, manufacturing, retail or testing lab operations, Yagielo said. And once those people are relocated, then they start hiring their staff locally, he said.

“And these newer states tend to bump up salaries to entice people, because you’re going to have not as many growers that want to leave a state like Colorado, that’s totally legal, to go to a Mississippi, [which just passed medical cannabis legalization in the November 2020 election],” Yagielo said.

According to Leafly, more than 35,500 Coloradans are employed by the cannabis industry, where sales began in 2014 and raked in $2.2 billion in 2020. Colorado is only outdone by California, which supported roughly 58,000 cannabis jobs in a $4.4 billion market in 2020.

In New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation Feb. 22 to legalize adult-use cannabis following voters’ approval of the constitutional amendment, job numbers are estimated to grow by 25,000 in the sector during the first year it enacts a program, Humiston said.

“That’s a lot of brand-new jobs being created, in addition to all the tax revenue that’s being created,” she said. “I mean, cannabis creates jobs, period, and helps communities help people get to work.”

When asked if some of the more mature markets, like Colorado and California, will level off with future job growth, Humiston said she doesn’t see that happening anytime soon.

“The beauty is that more and more consumers are coming into the market every year,” she said. “There’s a whole population of people that haven’t tried cannabis yet. As those consumers continue to become customers, the businesses continue growing. And, so, we’ve certainly seen a level of consolidation, but, if you look at the market trends, the market has continued to grow every single year since it legalized. And as the market grows, meaning just general cannabis sales, there’s a need for more employees.”

With the need for more employees comes the need for job-seeking candidates, who are not on short supply for many entry-level positions. Yagielo said he sees anywhere from 100 to 300 resumes for each job opening, with the number ranging on the high end for budtender positions. But future demand could come by way of factory jobs, he said.

While cannabis job growth has continued to boom, the United States’ industrial hemp industry has leveled off in the past year or so because of market saturation without enough factories to support it, Yagielo said.

“Until you have more of those factories, unfortunately, there is a lot of hemp just getting moldy in people’s barns,” he said. “When [more infrastructure is created], I think your job market is going to explode, because factories need thousands of people to run them.”

Both Humiston and Yagielo said there’s a direct correlation between more capital entering the space and increased hiring in the industry.

In addition to more states coming on board with cannabis legalization, financing options at the federal level would bring a new round of capital into the industry, Humiston said. The Secure And Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act—proposed legislation regarding the disposition of funds gained through the cannabis industry in the U.S.—would open those doors, she said.

In other words, some companies that have the financial wherewithal to join space in the industry haven’t yet pulled the trigger without fiscal confidence at the federal level.

“I think the other big factor outside of states becoming legalized is businesses having access to capital,” Humiston said. “As businesses can take on more traditional financing options, that will allow them to grow and expand and hire more people. So, I think SAFE Banking is a big bill that everybody’s kind of paying attention to, hoping that that pushes through.

“And then just as more investors get comfortable with the space, capital will lead to growth, which the No. 1 thing people do when they grow is hire.”

Shannon Price | Adobe Stock

Job growth in the cannabis sector doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.

The legal cannabis industry now supports 321,000 workers in the United States, with 77,000-plus jobs created in 2020, or roughly a 32% increase across the 37 states and the District of Columbia with medical or adult-use markets, according to a report by Leafly.

While cannabis companies were not immune to layoffs and furloughs during the onset of COVID-19, as job growth experienced a lull between March and August, hiring picked back up, and many operations thrived during the pandemic. The year-over-year growth showed that the cannabis sector created jobs at a faster rate than almost any other American industry, according to Leafly.

James Yagielo, the CEO of HempStaff, a recruiting and training company based in Miami that specializes in the cannabis and hemp industries, said the 32% increase reported by Leafly did not leave him open-mouthed. 

“It was not really that surprising because it was essential business, so that really narrowed down a lot of the different industries because a lot of industries are not essential,” he said. “So, I think that may have definitely skewed the numbers in cannabis’ favor. But, additionally, even though last year was a horrendous year for most people, our recruiting numbers pretty much matched 2019. We didn’t get the increase we expected, but we didn’t really get decrease either.”

When September 2020 hit, job growth picked back up in the sector, Yagielo said.

“We’ve kind of had a boom, say, post Labor Day in the cannabis industry in hiring that to [this] day is still going on,” he said. “So, while we did have that few-months lull, it really picked back up once they realized that the cannabis industry was not going to be hurt by the pandemic.”

The 32% increase in job growth in the cannabis sector came at a time when the broader U.S. economy shrank by 3.5% in 2020, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Although the cannabis industry may have appeared recession-proof to some, Vangst, a Denver-based recruiting platform that connects cannabis job seekers with employees, reported 80% of its clients had to lay off or furlough employees when stay-at-home orders rolled out at the onset of COVID-19, CEO Karson Humiston said.

“Nobody knew how the cannabis industry would respond to really its first economic downturn,” she said. “And, at the end of the day, cannabis was deemed essential and businesses did well, and people continued purchasing, consuming cannabis, but nobody knew that that would happen. And, so, capital stopped blowing into the space, which is a big driver of expansion, and businesses really kind of reined in their growth and expansion plans to see how the year would shake out.”

By the end of the year, companies were back on track with their hiring plans, Humiston said.

“Fortunately, the year went great and the election results were great, and I think that’s setting us up for huge, huge, huge growth potential in 2021 and beyond for jobs and cannabis,” she said.

With the hiring increase experienced in 2020, the U.S. cannabis industry now supports nearly as many jobs as there are firefighters in the country, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As employment continues to heat up, so are salaries and benefits in the sector, Humiston said. According to Vangst’s 2020 Cannabis Industry Salary Guide released last month, 83% of cannabis companies Vangst surveyed offer paid-time off, 73% offer medical insurance, 63% offer dental insurance, 62% offer vision insurance, 28% offer equity or stock options and 29% offer 401(k) plans—a more than 10% year-over-year increase.

“You have to remember the cannabis industry is a startup,” Humiston said. “The entire industry is a startup. This is one of the most immature market industries in the country, and yet they’re providing these great benefits and every year they keep on getting better. And, so, I think this industry is doing a great job in terms of how it’s paying its employees and in terms of the benefits that it’s providing.”

According to Cannabis Business Times and Cannabis Dispensary’s recent Best Cannabis Companies To Work For research, many employees are not satisfied with their pay and benefits, according to anonymous questionnaires distributed to teams of companies that applied to be in the program. The feedback showed 65% of cultivation employees at Best Cannabis Companies said they agreed their pay was fair for the work they perform, while that number was 59% for companies that applied but did not rank. Those numbers were 78% for dispensary employees working for top companies and 60% for others.

Budtenders, trimmers/post harvesters, packagers and delivery drivers in the 15 select states surveyed in Vangst’s guide made an average wage of $15 to $16 per hour, while some of the higher-paid jobs, like vice presidents of retail operations, manufacturing or sales, and directors of cultivation or extraction, all earned averaged salaries in the range of $105,000 to $160,000.

At HempStaff, Yagielo said the biggest increase in salary his company has noticed is for testing lab managers.

“There’s a lot of testing labs across the country trying to get online, when there’s not a lot of people that are your high-level Ph.D. scientists to get a lab set up,” he said. “So, we’ve seen, you know, salaries of lab managers go up above the $200,000-a-year mark recently. They’re usually looking for a Ph.D. in chemistry or something along those lines.”

When new states enact medical or adult-use cannabis programs, there’s often a big rush to relocate top-level managers to those states, whether it be for cultivation, extraction, manufacturing, retail or testing lab operations, Yagielo said. And once those people are relocated, then they start hiring their staff locally, he said.

“And these newer states tend to bump up salaries to entice people, because you’re going to have not as many growers that want to leave a state like Colorado, that’s totally legal, to go to a Mississippi, [which just passed medical cannabis legalization in the November 2020 election],” Yagielo said.

According to Leafly, more than 35,500 Coloradans are employed by the cannabis industry, where sales began in 2014 and raked in $2.2 billion in 2020. Colorado is only outdone by California, which supported roughly 58,000 cannabis jobs in a $4.4 billion market in 2020.

In New Jersey, where Gov. Phil Murphy signed legislation Feb. 22 to legalize adult-use cannabis following voters’ approval of the constitutional amendment, job numbers are estimated to grow by 25,000 in the sector during the first year it enacts a program, Humiston said.

“That’s a lot of brand-new jobs being created, in addition to all the tax revenue that’s being created,” she said. “I mean, cannabis creates jobs, period, and helps communities help people get to work.”

When asked if some of the more mature markets, like Colorado and California, will level off with future job growth, Humiston said she doesn’t see that happening anytime soon.

“The beauty is that more and more consumers are coming into the market every year,” she said. “There’s a whole population of people that haven’t tried cannabis yet. As those consumers continue to become customers, the businesses continue growing. And, so, we’ve certainly seen a level of consolidation, but, if you look at the market trends, the market has continued to grow every single year since it legalized. And as the market grows, meaning just general cannabis sales, there’s a need for more employees.”

With the need for more employees comes the need for job-seeking candidates, who are not on short supply for many entry-level positions. Yagielo said he sees anywhere from 100 to 300 resumes for each job opening, with the number ranging on the high end for budtender positions. But future demand could come by way of factory jobs, he said.

While cannabis job growth has continued to boom, the United States’ industrial hemp industry has leveled off in the past year or so because of market saturation without enough factories to support it, Yagielo said.

“Until you have more of those factories, unfortunately, there is a lot of hemp just getting moldy in people’s barns,” he said. “When [more infrastructure is created], I think your job market is going to explode, because factories need thousands of people to run them.”

Both Humiston and Yagielo said there’s a direct correlation between more capital entering the space and increased hiring in the industry.

In addition to more states coming on board with cannabis legalization, financing options at the federal level would bring a new round of capital into the industry, Humiston said. The Secure And Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act—proposed legislation regarding the disposition of funds gained through the cannabis industry in the U.S.—would open those doors, she said.

In other words, some companies that have the financial wherewithal to join space in the industry haven’t yet pulled the trigger without fiscal confidence at the federal level.

“I think the other big factor outside of states becoming legalized is businesses having access to capital,” Humiston said. “As businesses can take on more traditional financing options, that will allow them to grow and expand and hire more people. So, I think SAFE Banking is a big bill that everybody’s kind of paying attention to, hoping that that pushes through.

“And then just as more investors get comfortable with the space, capital will lead to growth, which the No. 1 thing people do when they grow is hire.”