New Frontier Data, a cannabis market-research and data-analysis firm, estimates that the US cannabis industry employs at least 250,000 people. And those are just the jobs that are directly involved with handling marijuana plants – others in the industry are harder to quantify, a New Frontier economist told the Associated Press.
Compare that to the size of one of the staple blue-collar industries, coal mining, which employed 52,300 in 2018.
Another study estimated the marijuana industry would grow to at least 330,000 jobs by 2022, a higher number than the 268,000 employees at U.S. steel and iron mills.