Arizona governor Doug Ducey signed legislation into law this week that eliminates some of the state’s onerous professional licensing requirements. Now free to make a living without first getting government approval are citrus packers, “assayers,” driving instructors, and yoga-teacher trainers.
I wrote last month about the effort to rein in licensing in Arizona—and the growing consensus on the need to reduce licensing requirements nationwide:
Such are the battles over occupational licensing being fought in courts and legislatures across the country. For decades, states have been putting ever more jobs off-limits to anyone who doesn’t have special government permission. In the years right after World War II, “less than 5 percent of U.S. workers were required to have a license from a state government in order to perform their jobs legally,” according to Morris Kleiner, professor of public affairs at the University of Minnesota. Now it’s estimated at nearly 30 percent. Every now and then, and with great effort, a state will remove the license requirement for a job: Kentucky, for instance, just eliminated a requirement that hair-braiders be licensed by the Kentucky Board of Hairdressers and Cosmetologists. But the longstanding trend runs the opposite direction. Though licenses put up hurdles, if not roadblocks, to people looking for work, states keep adding new occupations to the lists. Louisiana licenses florists. Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Connecticut license “home entertainment installers.” Seven states license upholsterers. In 33 states you need a license to be an auctioneer; in 36 states you need a license to call yourself a “makeup artist”; and in five states you need government approval to be a “shampooer.” Before you can work as an interior designer in Washington, D.C., the District of Columbia Board of Architecture and Interior Design requires that you supply educational bona fides, pass an “examination administered by the National Council for Interior Design Qualification,” and pay $175 in fees. There are over a thousand different occupations that at least one state regulates.”
Whole thing here.
