A new report claims the number of people working in Michigan’s marijuana industry doubled over the past year.
It’s difficult to put a firm number on Michigan pot employment since no government agency or industry group is tracking it.
But Seattle-based cannabis industry website Leafly is out with its fifth annual national jobs estimate. The report estimates nationally 321,000 people are working in the industry in states where medical, adult-use or both are legal.Leafly spokesman Bruce Barcott places Michigan’s cannabis job number at 18,078, an increase of 9,200 over their 2019 estimate.
“It’s not going to stop growing, but it will cool off,” says Barcott. “Essentially 2020 was the big bang for Michigan’s legal cannabis industry.”
That's because 2020 was the first full year of legal recreational marijuana sales in Michigan. 56% of Michiganders voted in favor of legalizing recreational pot use in 2018.
Leafly’s jobs estimate is calculated from the nearly one billion dollars in combined sales of adult-use and medical marijuana in Michigan last year.
