Occupational Licensing: It Isn’t Just for Doctors and Lawyers Any More

“Cat groomers, tattoo artists, tree trimmers and about a dozen other specialists across the country … are clamoring for more rules governing small businesses,” reports the Wall Street Journal in a front‐​page story today. “They’re asking to become state‐​licensed professionals, which would mean anyone wanting to be, say, a music therapist or a locksmith, would have to pay fees, apply for a license and in some cases, take classes and pass exams.” And despite all the talk about deregulation and encouraging entrepreneurship, “The most recent study, from 2008, found 23% of U.S. workers were required to obtain state licenses, up from just 5% in 1950,” according to Morris Kleiner of the University of Minnesota.


The Cato Institute has been taking on this issue for decades. In 1986 Stanley Gross of Indiana State University reviewed the economic literature on the impact of licensing on cost and quality. Kleiner wrote in Regulation in 2006:

Occupational regulation has grown because it serves the interests of those in the occupation as well as government. Members of an occupation benefit if they can increase the perception of quality and thus the demand for their services, while restricting supply simultaneously. Government officials benefit from the electoral and monetary support of the regulated as well as the support of the general public, whose members think that regulation results in quality improvement, especially when it comes to reducing substandard services.

divAdjunct scholar Shirley Svorny noted that even in the medical field, “licensure not only fails to protect consumers from incompetent physicians, but, by raising barriers to entry, makes health care more expensive and less accessible.” David Skarbek studied the temporary relaxation of licensing requirements in Florida after Hurricanes Katrina and Frances and concluded that Florida should lift the rules permanently. In his book The Right to Earn a Living: Economic Freedom and the Law, Timothy Sandefur devotes a chapter to “protectionist” legislation such as occupational licensing.