BNN - AND not even legal federally --Nearly half-million Americans employed in U.S. pot industry: report There are nearly a half-million Americans employed in the country's legal cannabis industry, according to a report co-authored by Leafly. To be exact, there are 428,059 full-time equivalent jobs supported by the U.S. legal cannabis sector as of January 2022, an increase of 33 per cent from a year earlier, the Leafly Jobs Report said. The figure includes "plant-touching" jobs but also positions in ancillary businesses such as accounting, human resources and legal affairs as well as "indirect" jobs in cannabis-related media, lobbying and public relations. To compare, Canada's legal cannabis industry supports about 98,000 jobs, 11,000 of which are directly in the industry while the rest are deemed "indirect" or "induced", according to recent research from Deloitte.