Colorado Cannabis Industry is Creating Jobs

Now that we find ourselves halfway through 2016, it’s clear that Colorado’s cannabis business is doing as well as projected. From employment growth to overall revenue, everything is looking up in the cannabis industry since recreational cannabis sales began in 2014.

Patty Silverstein is the president and chief economist at Development Research Partners in Jefferson County. According to The Denver Post, Silverstein stated that employment growth in Colorado’s food manufacturing sector was almost non-existent for over a decade, with an average of 0.1 percent a year from 2001 to 2013. Once cannabis was legalized for recreational sales, Colorado’s employment rate went up 3.5 percent.

The next year, Colorado saw a 4.9 percent increase for employment in the food-manufacturing industry, which Silverstein points to the edible cannabis industry. She explained, “The data doesn’t allow for us to slice and dice to say, ‘These are indeed edibles or not,’ but the recognition is this is where they would be classified.”
Especially considering the employment growth was stale for so many years prior to the legalization of cannabis, it is only clear how much recreational cannabis sales have positively impacted the creation of new jobs in the state of Colorado. Similar correlations were made in other job sectors as well.

Chemical manufacturing employment growth was on a downward spiral from 2002 to 2012, dropping an average of 2.2 percent every year. The trend reversed in following years, with a 1.4 percent increase in 2014 and a much larger 3.9 percent increase in 2015. Silverstein explained how cannabidiol extraction is considered a career under chemical manufacturing, so once again, we see the correlation between the cannabis industry and job growth. Manufacturing jobs are still increasing this year, as they were up 1.8 percent through May.

Creation of jobs is very important, especially considering many careers are being lost every day in the oil and gas industries. As the legal cannabis industry continues to steadily grow, it would be ideal to see the careers created within the industry continue to grow as well.