A Snapshot of the Cannabis Industry – Facts that make you go “WOW!”
With over two decades of some sort of legal cannabis on the books, the industry has grown significantly. It’s important to take a step back and just look how far we have come over the years. Today, we’ll be taking a look at a few facts that is undeniably awesome when it comes to modern cannabis.
It’s worth a shit-load of money!
The cannabis industry reported thus far $52 billion in sales and has shown a 76% increase in revenue this year. With more cannabis initiatives on paper and being discussed by lawmakers, we can only expect this to climb significantly.
In fact, it’s expected to climb to $77 Billion by 2020, which would mean that it makes more than the GDP of 9 states in the US.
It employs a shit-ton of people!
The cannabis industry currently employs more than a quarter of a million people in the United States. These are jobs directly involved with the plant. The secondary jobs created by the industry is even more. Other sectors such as, marketers, lawyers, accountants, software developers and the rest are more difficult to quantify.
Nonetheless, 250,000 people working on the plant is a significant milestone. Can you imagine 20 years ago that there would be a quarter of a million people legally working in the marijuana industry? Another study estimated that by 2020, the job count could reach up to 330,000 people.
Compare this to staple industries such as Coal mining, that only employed 52,300 people in 2018. Cannabis is one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing job sector in the United States.
It pays better than your typical job!
Another fact to consider is that the median salary for the marijuana industry is estimated to be 10% higher than the US median salary. This comes out to nearly $60,000 USD per year, compared to the $52, 863 per year as the US median.
It seems that the risks of working in the cannabis industry is worth it. Especially since the industry would prefer to pay their workers more than to pay higher federal taxes.
Investors are going crazy!
It’s never been a better time to think of cannabis businesses. Investors poured in more than $10 billion dollars of investment into the industry in 2018. This year, estimates speculate that it could shoot up to $16 billion this year.
This means that cannabis entrepreneurs should be looking into finding funding for their projects. It’s a sellers’ market currently. If you have a golden-one-in-a-life-time idea, it’s worth pursuing it.
Most Sales are still black market
Oops, until the Federal government fully legalizes cannabis, the vast majority of sales occurred on black or grey markets. 87% in fact according to a report from Arcview Market Research. I’m not entirely sure I can get behind the 87% figure, however it’s not unreasonable to think that a large portion of sales still occur in the black market.
The only reason why the black market continues to thrive under the current scheme is due to the illegality of cannabis in certain states. Once it’s federally legalized, costs are driven down, the black market will begin to fade.
The black market won’t ever truly disappear, however it will become dwarfed rather quickly.
More Marijuana than Oreos
Turns out that cannabis consumers purchased so much weed that it out sold Oreos. This out sold not only Oreos ($700 million) by large margin, but also beat the sales of Organic Produce ($4.8 billion). In 2017, cannabis raked in about $6 billion. These numbers are only poised to grow.
In fact, in 2017, cannabis’ estimated demand was at $50 billion. To put this into perspective, video games had a demand of $36 billion.
Cannabis has shown absolutely no signs of slowing down, meaning that over the next few years, along with Hemp, the industry is poised to grow significantly more. We’re not even considering textiles and construction material; this is just smoke able cannabis thus far.
We’ve come a long way
In the late 1990s, the idea of cannabis legalization was merely a pipedream. However, these days the industry is strong and growing. It’s transformed significantly over the past two decades and the moment that banking restrictions are lifted, there will be no stopping this industry ever.
I don’t think, as a human species, we will do the error of making cannabis illegal again. That is, unless we’re struck by a comet and reduced to our primitive states. However, even then, smoking a bowl in the aftermath would probably be the best course of action.
Nonetheless, it’s safe to say that we have come a long way since we initially legalized cannabis. I say “we”, because it was a joint effort from all over the world.
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