Marijuana Legalization Boosts Job Opportunities In The Agricultural Sector, Study Finds
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Despite prohibitionist arguments that marijuana legalization harms the workforce, a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that, if anything, the reform actually increases job opportunities. Researchers at San Diego State University and Bentley University said that their study is the "first to explore the impact of recreational marijuana legalization (RML) on labor market outcomes of working-age individuals," analyzing employment and wage trends in states that have and haven't enacted adult-use legalization. If what prohibitionists have insisted—that legalization would create health and safety issues, stunting labor outcomes and job opportunities—were true, the study would have shown "substantial negative impacts" on the economy and workforce. But the analysis didn't turn up evidence to support those claims. "Instead, our findings show some evidence that RML adoption is associated with small increases in adult employment in the agricultural sector, consistent with opening of a new licit market to produce and cultivate marijuana," the working paper says. "Among early-adopting states, California, Colorado, and (to a lesser extent) Oregon saw boosts in agriculture work." The study also found "some evidence that RML adoption is associated with modest (often short-run) employment gains for Hispanics and individuals over age 30,." The researchers said that the "largely null, and occasionally positive employment (and earnings) effects are robust" in that they 1) used event-study analyses that tested both pre-legalization trends and assessments of "post-treatment dynamics in labor market effects," 2) controlled for trends in states bordering those with adult-use legalization, 3) used "newly developed difference-in-difference methods" that minimize study bias and 4) included "synthetic control analyses of early adopting states that allow an exploration of longer-run economic effects." "Together, we conclude that legalization of recreational marijuana has, at most, muted effects on the economic well-being of working-age individuals," they said. "Our estimates show that…
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