Cannabis companies attract workers from other industries

James Crotz, Dispensary Manager at Deep Roots Harvest in Damonte Ranch, completes a transaction with a customer. Courtesy Photo

by Kaleb Roedel

In 2020, many industries downsized and scaled back to absorb the shocks of shutdowns and social distancing mandates caused by the pandemic.

Now, as the economy begins to recover, many sectors are struggling to ramp up and bring revenues back to pre-COVID levels due to staffing shortages.

That’s not the case for one of the fastest-growing industries in the country: cannabis. In Nevada, some marijuana dispensaries and cultivation facilities have had little problem attracting workers as people in hard-hit sectors like retail and restaurants who were furloughed or laid off have moved into cannabis.

Take Deep Roots Harvest. Over the past 18 months, the company has opened two dispensaries in the Silver State, one in Damonte Ranch and the other in North Las Vegas. Three more Deep Roots retail stores are under construction in Clark County.

The company’s new dispensaries in Vegas and Reno quickly became fully staffed, creating roughly 60 jobs, said Marshall, noting the company added another 20 jobs on the cultivation and production side.

“It seems like we’re attracting entrants coming from every industry,” Jon Marshall, COO of Deep Roots Harvest, told the NNBW. “We’ve definitely seen people from all sorts of service industry jobs come into cannabis because it’s a great cultural fit, it’s a pretty relaxed atmosphere, you get product samples, and we do tip our budtenders out.

“I think as people become more and more comfortable with cannabis, you’re seeing people come out of the woodwork.”

The marijuana industry added 80,0000 jobs in 2020, more than double what it did a year prior, according to data from the Leafly Jobs Report.

Read the entire article in the NNBW: https://www.nnbw.com/news/2021/nov/04/cannabis-companies-attract-workers-other-industrie/