CEO and employee pay gap reflected in cannabis industry pay –

April 20 is the unofficial marijuana holiday, and while marijuana enjoys a more mainstream profile, there are just a few There are huge wage disparities in the industry. Cannabis sales are expected to achieve $31 billion by the tip of 2024, but exponential growth comes with growing pains.

“We are struggling as an industry – we urgently need a regulatory overhaul to prevent more small cannabis business owners from closing their doors and laying off employees,” Truman Bradley, executive director of the Marijuana Industry Group’s 2023 Class of 2023, told Business Insider.

A 12 months later, income equality arrived. As in other industries, the salaries of marijuana company CEOs exceed those of store employees. The average cannabis CEO pay in 2023 was $402,350.

Budtenders, or point-of-sale employees behind the counter at smoke shops and other dispensaries, take home a median of $42,000 a 12 months. The lower you’re in the corporate structure, the lower your pay; This is named the CEO-employee pay gap, and research suggests it’s a nasty sign for business.

In 2023, ESG Dive reported that the Institute for Policy Studies’ evaluation of the CEO-employee pay gap on the 100 S&P 500 corporations with the bottom median employee pay in 2022 found that the typical CEO-to-employee pay ratio was 603 to 1.

Similarly, Founded Economic Policy Institute this pay disparity has increased from 21 to 1 in 1965 to 344 to 1 in 2022. According to Sarah Anderson, director of worldwide economic policy at EPI, a corporation of voters, employees and shareholders could help alleviate among the pay disparity.

In January it is sensible. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) with Representatives Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced the Excessive Taxes on CEOs Act, which goals to handle widening pay inequality. The bill goals to force CEOs whose pay is 50 to 100% higher than the typical employee’s pay to pay more taxes. If for some reason the CEO isn’t the best paid employee, the CEO with the best salary will probably be used to evaluate pay inequality inside the company.

“Millionaire and billionaire CEOs of massive corporations are earning increasingly higher salaries, even as their workers – who make these profits possible – can barely keep up with rising costs,” Van Hollen said in a press release. “These obscene loopholes are grossly unfair to workers and harmful to our economy as a whole.”

“Corporate greed is a disease that has long plagued our country. “CEOs currently earn 400 times more than their average employee,” Tlaib said. “It is shameful that corporations continue to reap record profits by exploiting the labor of their workers. Working families deserve to live with human dignity… It is time for the wealthy to pay their fair share.”