Two major California cannabis manufacturers are laying off more than 100 workers amid a continued downturn in the country’s largest adult-use marijuana market.
CraftForce Services, the manufacturing arm of Santa Rosa, Calif.-headquartered CannaCraft, will lay off nearly 60 employees at its Santa Rosa operations on Sept. 20, according to a federally mandated Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice.
And NorCal Cannabis Co., operating as GB2 LLC and also based in Santa Rosa, will lay off about 49 employees on Sept. 13, according to a WARN notice first reported by The Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
Bret Peace, CEO of parent company Groundwork Holding, tied the cuts to broader industry pressure, telling The Press Democrat that it’s a “sad day for the industry.”
Why is California cannabis manufacturer Cannacraft laying off workers?
“It’s not a decision we made lightly,” he told the newspaper. “The industry has moved to a place where people are more specialized and they’re able to do more with less space, and we couldn’t compete with that.
“It was sized to a scale of industry that didn’t materialize.”
CannaCraft, which has operated in Sonoma County for about a decade, merged with Southern California retail chain March and Ash in 2022.
Most of the affected Cannacraft workers are production technicians, many of whom are represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, according to the newspaper.
At NorCal, most of those workers handle packaging and trimming and are not represented by a union, The Press Democrat reported.
Are the layoffs a result of California’s market conditions?
The layoffs come as California’s legal cannabis market contracts despite a pledge from the state’s top regulator that billion-dollar growth is possible.
Licensed California cannabis retailers reported $3.9 billion in cannabis sales in 2025, a significant drop from the $4.2 billion in 2024, according to state data.
It’s also the third straight year of decline for the country’s largest market. California cannabis sales were $4.4 billion in 2023, according to the state Department of Tax and Fee Administration.
Local governments have started responding.
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Sonoma County’s Board of Supervisors approved a tax break in April, cutting the cannabis business rate to $0 for qualifying operators in fiscal 2026-27, The Press Democrat reported.
The board also created an annual licensing system, with fees starting at more than $500, to fund the county’s commercial cannabis program.
Other companies across the country are also cutting jobs, with marijuana multistate operator The Cannabist Co. shuttering cultivation operations in Colorado and in New Jersey.
The legal U.S. cannabis industry employed 412,500 people in early 2026, a 2.7% decline from the 425,002 legal marijuana jobs reported last year, according to the U.S. Cannabis Jobs Report 2026 from Denver-based cannabis staffing platform Vangst and Oregon-based cannabis data and research company Whitney Economics.
