Oregon marijuana data from Beau Whitney

Oregon economist Beau Whitney’s early 2017 document, “Cannabis Employment Estimates” for the Oregon House Committee on Economic Development and Trade, is public,

but is not available elsewhere on the internet. Beau kindly agreed to let the Center for New Revenue post it here:  Whitney Economics — Oregon legislative jobs update 03-08-17

Here is Beau’s Summary:

• • As of February 21, 2017, there are 917 OLCC licensed cannabis businesses and an additional 1,225 applications for a cannabis business. 2,142 in total.

• • The Oregon Employment Department lists 776 [actually 388 — see below] cannabis businesses in Oregon.
  • There are approximately 12,500 jobs associated with the cannabis industry in Oregon
  • These are jobs that directly touch cannabis and are not jobs associated with auxiliary businesses such as security, regulatory, accounting, consulting, real estate, etc.
  • This is a very conservative estimate and these numbers are expected to increase once the more detailed analysis is completed.
  • At an average wage of $12.13/hour, the total annual wages associated with these jobs are $315 million
  • With a multiplier of 4, this implies that there is $1.2 billion in economic activity related to these wages

Here is his message:
“[T]he public record reflects an employment department data error. The report should read that there are 388 businesses instead of 776. The hourly wages and everything else is correct.
“Please feel free to post this with attribution.
“I am trying to do a more comprehensive report later this fall. Please stay tuned.”