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Should you need a government permission slip before you can earn an honest
living?
It's called occupational licensing,
and a new national report released by the Institute for Justice shows just how
widespread and costly it has become. In the 1950's only one in twenty
workers needed a government license to work.
Today it's one in three.
To get a license to work, the government forces you to clear one hurdle after
another;
Education or training,
passing tests, paying fees, and more.
Too often these hurdles take time and money to jump.
They make it harder and harder for people to find jobs and to build new
businesses that create jobs.
How much harder?
To find out, we examined licensing laws for a hundred and two occupations. In all
fifty states, and the District of Columbia.
We looked only at low and moderate-income jobs, like
interior designers,
massage therapists, and shampooers. Not doctors or lawyers. On average,
these licenses require you to pay two hundred and nine dollars, pass an exam,
and complete more than two hundred seventy five days, or about nine months
of training and experience.
One-third of these licenses take one
two, or even
as many as six full years to earn.
That's a lot of time and effort spent getting permission to work, instead of
working.
And, we haven't even talked about costs, like tuition for required schooling.
Which states are the worst for licensing?
Louisiana
licenses the most lower-income occupations at seventy-one.
Hawaii has the highest hurdles, and the very worst states for would-be workers
have a lot of licenses and high hurdles. Arizona leads that list followed by
California, Oregon, Nevada, Arkansas, Hawaii, Florida, and
Louisiana.
In those eight states it takes an average of one and a half years of
training.
an exam, and more than three hundred dollars in fees to get a license.
Unfortunately, research provides a little evidence the government licensing like
this makes the goods and services you buy any safer,
or better.
Instead, it raises costs for consumers, and reduces opportunities for workers.
We found at least four other reasons to doubt that many of these hurdles are
necessary.
First,
some licenses simply don't make sense.
Should you really need a license to shampoo hair,
be an interior designer, or work is a funeral attendant?
Second,
the vast majority of jobs we study, in one state or another,
without licensing.
Shampooers are licensed in only five states, interior designers in only three
states and D.C.,
and funeral attendants in a mere nine states. The question is,
what's happening in states not licensing these jobs?
It's hard to believe there is a dangerous epidemic of shampoo in
forty-six states.
Licenses like these should probably be scrapped.
Third, licensing requirements are often wildly inconsistent from one state to another.
Take manicurist,
ten states require at least four months of training,
but Iowa requires only nine days, Alaska just three.
Do manicurists in say, Alabama or Oregon, really needs so much more training?
Lowering hurdles like these would make it easier for more people to find work,
and create jobs for others. Fourth,
the difficulty of jumping licensing hurdles often has little to do with the
safety risk of the job.
The hardest occupation to enter in our study is
Interior Designer.
It takes six years of education training,
plus an exam and fees
all for a harmless occupation that is practiced safely
in forty-seven states, without licensing.
Compare that to emergency medical technicians,
who quite literally hold lives in their hands, yet
sixty-six other occupations have heavier licensor burdens than EMT's
including landscape workers,
manicurist, and a host of contractor designations.
The average EMT spends about a month in training and takes two exams. 81 00:04:11.469 --> 00:04:14.909 The average cosmetologist spends about a year.
More than ten times the training of an EMT.
This doesn't mean that
EMT's should face higher hurtles.
Other occupations should face lower hurdles, or
not at all.
Licensing may have little to do with protecting public health and safety,
but it does protect those who already have licenses from competition.
Raising barriers keeps new competitors out and prices high.
If state law makers want to help more people find jobs they should start by
clearing away licensing barriers that do little more than protect some people
from competition,
by keeping others out of work.
discover more at
IJ.org/licensetowork
IJ.org/licensetowork