By Jillian Peterson, The Fresh Toast

With over 440,000 working in the cannabis industry, it overtook these groups – but is still way behind others.

Back in 2020, we predicted cannabis industry workers (as an industry) would overtake computer programmers.  And, it happened. Currently there are 440,000 people working in weed, and 343,000 in computer programming.   While a large amount of computer programmers work for marquee companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Stripe, most cannabis workers work for mom and pop businesses.

The economics of the marijuana industry is also positive as the jobs are spread out across the country and in different sized communities. Most tech jobs are in hubs including Atlanta, Austin, New York City and Seattle. Currently, the cannabis industry is at the mercy of DC and the Biden administration as it waits rescheduling.  Overall, the federal government is the largest employer in the US with 2.95 million clocking in to make things run, which doesn’t always understand start up industries.

Photo by FatCamera/Getty Images

The cannabis industry is way behind the behemoths of retail and fast food. Their base is a mixture of big companies and small business in almost everyone community. There are 9.2 million workers employed as retail salespersons, cashiers or first-line supervisors and  4,717,192 workers in fast food taking and making your coffee, burger, taco and donuts.

According to some tech workers in Seattle, computer programmers have reached the apex of benefits during the pandemic and now are settling into to fewer perks like the rest of the work force. Still the average salary of programmer is $100K while in the cannabis industry, it is $47K. There is a significant difference in training and location, but the cannabis industry still provide a good number of jobs in country.

When it comes to numbers, the cannabis workforce is about the same size as Target (450K), Kroger (420K) and FedEX (480K). It is way smaller than Amazon (1.6 million) and Walmart (2.3 million). There are almost 1.9 million farmers and over 1.5 million realtors (members of the National Association of Realtors). And, in regards to jocks, there are a bit over 35K who work in all the professional sports in the United States.

The Fresh Toast is a daily lifestyle platform with a side of cannabis. For more information, visit www.thefreshtoast.com.

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