Cannabis Industry Salaries Revealed In New Report – Forbes

Workers and business owners alike have new insight into the salary ranges and hiring trends for legal marijuana businesses with the release of a new guide from cannabis industry professional recruiting firm Vangst. Now in its third year of publication, the Vangst Cannabis Industry Salary Guide was released on Monday and is available via a free download.

“To further help job seekers and cannabis companies, Vangst now offers new job searching and networking features which make it even easier for our community to learn, communicate, and grow with one another,” Vangst CEO Karson Humiston wrote in the report. “It’s giving candidates and hiring teams a much-needed way to make genuine human connections at a time when getting the conversation started is more integral than ever.”

To prepare the guide, Vangst surveyed businesses and workers to uncover trends in hiring, pay and benefits for the cannabis industry in 2020. Average salaries, as well as high and low benchmarks that reflect differences in factors such as experience and region, are given for cannabis jobs in six categories including retail, cultivation, lab and extraction, manufacturing, sales and delivery. Employers were surveyed about benefits, revealing that 83% of employees receive paid time off while 73% receive medical benefits.

The report looks at a range of pay rates for various jobs in the industry’s cultivation, lab and extraction, manufacturing, and retail sectors. In cultivation, trimmers start at about $15.00 an hour on average while a director of cultivation can earn about $115,000, an increase of 25% over the previous year. Extraction technicians average about $37,000 per year, while managers earn about $65,000. In retail, budtenders make about $15.00 per hour plus gratuities and a vice president of retail operations averages about $150,000 annually.

Cannabis Hiring Outlook Strong

The report found that despite workforce reductions and furloughs in March and April of last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the cannabis industry was able to rebound with strong demand from consumers. The cannabis job outlook for the future is also encouraging, particularly with the success of cannabis legalization measures in five states in November’s election. In those states alone, the cannabis industry is expected to add more than 26,000 new jobs by 2025, with New Jersey leading the pack with a projected 21,393 new positions in the sector.

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Sean Cooley, Vangst’s head of content and SEO, said that temporary positions will provide many of the employment opportunities in the cannabis industry and noted that jobs related to home delivery saw tremendous growth in 2020 due to the pandemic.

“We consistently see high demand for gig workers, so trimmers, packagers, and budtenders are always needed, and over the past year there’s been a surge in delivery drivers and logistics coordinators,” he wrote in an email. “On top of that, we’ve seen a jump in cultivation directors, administrative and corporate employees, sales reps, marketers, lab managers, and directors of HR as hiring plans are ramping up to meet post-quarantine demands.”

Cannabis Professional Snapshot

The Vangst Cannabis Industry Salary Guide also includes an analysis of data from more than 1,000 professionals in the legal marijuana industry that provides a snapshot of employees working in the field. The report finds that many workers are transitioning to the cannabis industry from other industries including food service, retail, agriculture, healthcare, and marketing and public relations, although whether they will receive better compensation in the cannabis industry compared to their previous one is unclear.

“It’s difficult to sum up whether cannabis roles pay better on the whole compared to similar roles in other industries as you have to take maturity of the market, background of the employer, and the specialized skills of the candidate into account,” Cooley said, adding that future editions of the guide will “take a closer look at comparable compensation. Increasingly we are seeing standard benefits packages from cannabis companies meet the expectations from candidates in crossover industries.”

More than half (57%) of the survey respondents had a bachelor’s or advanced college degree. More than two-thirds had prior experience in the unlicensed cannabis industry, with 21% of them working in marijuana grey markets for ten years or more. Cooley said that candidates don’t necessarily need to be cannabis consumers themselves, but relevant experience is helpful, particularly for more advanced positions.

“What we have found to be true is that employers prefer a candidate that has a strong understanding of their role within the industry, not necessarily that they are users of cannabis,” he said. “Previously, businesses brought talent in from outside industries to apply their expertise to cannabis. That experience didn’t always translate one-to-one, so moving forward, more key positions will ask for both experience related to the position and success working directly in cannabis.”

Humiston said in a press release that the new guide is a valuable tool for both job seekers and employers looking for insight into industry standards and trends in cannabis employment.

„As we enter 2021, the Vangst Cannabis Industry Salary Guide will provide cannabis companies and prospective employees with the salary and benefits information they need to build a professional, diverse, and engaged workplace,” she said.

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