Anne-Marie Fischer
This week, the first ever salary and jobs guide for the cannabis industry was released by Vangst. The platform, that considers itself “the Monster.com for weed jobs” used data from over 1200 cannabis companies (of which 70% offered medical cannabis programs) to create the snapshot of the state of jobs and salaries in the U.S. cannabis market.
Overall, the report shows that while U.S. job growth is fairly stagnant, jobs are booming within the cannabis industry, with a 690% growth in job listings between January 1, 2017, and August 1, 2018. Vangst forecasts the growth of cannabis jobs by and an additional 220% by 2019. Average salary increased 16.1% across the board between 2017 and 2018.
With this growth in jobs comes the opportunity for a more inclusive and diverse workforce. “Given the industry is so young, current businesses and influencers in the space have the opportunity to build the cannabis industry into the most inclusive industry in the world,” says Vangst CEO Karson Humiston, “Cannabis businesses need to build diversity recruiting programs and prioritize building highly diverse companies from the start. While we are seeing many companies do this well, there is room for improvement.”
The salary section highlights common positions within the industry, positing salaries from the top, high, average, and low end. The positions that were analysed include Director of Extraction (low end salary $47,000, top salary $191,000), Director of Cultivation (low end salary $47,000, top salary $250,500), Compliance Manager (low end salary $45,000, top salary $149,000), Dispensary Store Manager (low end salary $41,500, top salary $98,000), Outside Sales Representative (low end salary $28,000, top salary $150,000), Budtender (low end $12/hr, top wage $16/hr), and Timmer (low end $11.50/hr, top wage $14.50/hr).
“We were surprised to see the drastic difference between low salaries and top salaries,” says Humiston, “It’s very clear the companies that are scaling the fastest are those which are paying on the high end and prioritizing recruiting top talent from other industries.”
In what areas can we expect to see the most growth? According to Humiston, “Cannabis technology companies are growing extremely quickly. The demand for CTOs, front and back-end engineers, product managers, business intelligence managers, and designers is rapidly increasing.”
The Jobs and Salary Guide can be found at https://vangst.com/.
