Cannabis sales in Michigan shot up 81 percent in 2021, reaching $1.79 billion and supporting 31,152 jobs. That 72 percent annual growth in jobs puts Michigan behind only California and Colorado in terms of total state cannabis employment. Michigan maintains robust medical and adult-use markets, with 402 dual (adult-use and medical) retailers, 47 adult-use stores, and 63 standalone medical provisioning centers.
With no cap on the number of retail licenses, Michigan’s regulatory system is making strong progress in moving the state’s full cannabis demand into the licensed and regulated market.
Local municipal prohibitions against legal sales continue to prop up the illicit market, however. Of the state’s 1,700 cities and townships, only about 160 allow licensed adult-use sales.
Whitney Economics estimates Michigan’s full cannabis demand, for a state of 10 million residents, at around $3.2 billion—which means the current legal system is fulfilling just over half the demand. There’s still a lot of illicit-to-legal market migration to come.
Overall, the marijuana industry in the U.S. continued to grow in 2021, with almost half a million people now employed full-time in the cannabis sector as more state markets come online and mature. But the new figures for 2021 are already sizable, especially considering the ongoing challenges businesses have faced amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Last year was the first time that job creation in the marijuana industry exceeded six figures, with 107,059 new jobs created, compared to 32,700 in 2019 and 77,300 in 2020.
As of 2021, there are 428,059 people employed in the marijuana space, compared to 321,000 the prior year.
To read more, click on Leafly