A report from Statistics Canada in 2017 stated that 2,400 people were employed by 55 different cannabis companies before the start of 2018. Since then, with the legalization of cannabis, the amount of cannabis sector jobs has grown at a tremendous rate. The Canadian cannabis sector has been reported to increase rapidly with open positions since 6 months prior to Canada’s recent legalization of recreational cannabis.
A popular job application website, Indeed, published a report that the number of positions in 2017 that were cannabis-related had increased by more than 3 times the number of open positions when compared to the previous year. The company also released that the number of times cannabis-related jobs were searched had increased from 6 out of every 10,000 to 26. Cannabis positions on the website that were frequently searched included budtender, quality assurance specialist, and cannabis connoisseur.
“The sector is moving at a breakneck speed,” said Alison McMahon, the founder and chief executive of Cannabis at Work. “It is the most fast-paced industry I’ve been a part of, and I’ve been a part of the tech start-up world.” McMahon also mentioned that the amount of marketing and sales positions has increased due to the amount of new cannabis retail locations and that cultivation positions have been harder to fill.