The Economic and Human Cost of Occupational Licensing

I wrote three columns about occupational licensing in 2017 (here, here, and here), but have since neglected the issue.

It’s time to revisit the issue, and we’ll start with this John Stossel video.

One of the reasons I’m writing about the issue is that the Archbridge Institute issued a report last year that ranked states based on the degree to which they required workers to get permissions slips from government in order to work.

The report was written by Noah Trudeau of Saint Francis University and Edward Timmons of West Virginia University, and it includes a very helpful map. Light blue states are the best and red states are the worst.

Here are some of the findings from their overview.

Occupational licensing affects more than 20 percent of workers in the United States. The extent of occupational licensing greatly differs across states. From both a research and public policy standpoint, it is important to have a comprehensive measure of occupational licensure across states and occupations. The purpose of the State Occupational Licensing Index (SOLI) is to help fill in this gap. The report contains four main sections: an introduction to the index, an overview of our methodology, a comparison to other database rankings, and state profiles for all 50 US states plus DC. …In 2023, the state with the highest occupational licensing burden is Arkansas (#1), followed by Texas (#2), Alabama (#3), Oklahoma (#4), and Washington (#5); the state with the lowest occupational licensing burden is Kansas (#51), preceded by Missouri (#50), Wyoming (#49), Indiana (#48), and Colorado (#47).

Congratulations to Kansas for having the most laissez-faire approach. Arkansas, by contrast, deserves scorn.

Why scorn for Arkansas? Let’s look at some additional analysis.

In 2018, Morris Kleiner and Evgeny Vorotnikov authored a study for the Institute for Justice about occupational licensing. Here are some of their results.

…licensing is frequently wasteful. In preventing people from working in the occupations for which they are best suited, licensing misallocates people’s human capital. In forcing people to fulfill burdensome licensing requirements that do not raise quality, licensing misallocates people’s human capital, money and time. And with its promise of economic returns over and above what can be had absent licensing, licensing encourages occupational practitioners and their occupational associations to invest resources in rent-seeking instead of more productive activity. Taking these misallocated resources into account, we find potential costs to the economy that far exceed those from deadweight losses…we find licensing costs the American economy $183.9 billion in misallocated resources… Assuming the 15 percent national returns, we find licensing costs the American economy $197.3 billion in misallocated resources.

That’s the economic cost to the country.

But don’t forget that hundreds of thousands of Americans lose employment opportunities because of their restrictive regulations.

So there is a substantial human cost as well.

Let’s close with a bit of good news. Veronique de Rugy wrote a few years ago that there are reform efforts.

The beauty of American federalism is that it allows states to try out different policies and see what works well and what does not. The state of Arizona is putting this flexibility to good use. After implementing a moratorium on occupational-licensing requirements in 2015, the state passed legislation to recognize occupational licenses from other states last year. Going against special-interest groups in various industries whose members would prefer to face as little competition as possible, Arizona is saying that it is open for all business and welcomes competition. As a result, Arizona is effectively launching a healthy competition for workers among the states themselves. …Faced in part with this competition from Arizona, other states are finally getting serious about reforming their own occupational-licensing requirements. …Shoshana Weissmann and Jarrett Dieterle write that many other states are following in Arizona’s footsteps, as evidenced by the fact that in 2020 alone “universal recognition bills are being pursued in Virginia, West Virginia, California, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, New Hampshire, Indiana, and New Jersey.” …Let’s hope that all the states will follow Arizona’s lead and catch the reform bug so they, too, will free their workers, consumers, and economies from ridiculous licensing requirements.

And other states are catching up, as Veronique hoped.

Marc Joffe has an article about positive developments in Ohio and Nevada.

And here are some excerpts from a Forbes column by Patrick Gleason.

…there is another policy trend emerging that, like income tax relief and greater educational choice, is making states more attractive to workers and employers. That trend is the push by policymakers to remove or mitigate the barriers to employment that state occupational licensing requirements have become. …Universal License Recognition (ULR)…Nearly half of the states now have a ULR law. But four years ago, zero did, underscoring how quickly the ULR movement has grown. Former Governor Doug Ducey (R) made Arizona the first state to enact ULR back in 2019, with positive results observable in the subsequent years. …by also making occupational licensing requirements less taxing for new residents to comply with, both in terms of time and money, reform-minded governors and state lawmakers have honed in on a new way, like with rate-reducing tax reform, to make their states more attractive places to live, work, do business, and support a family.

This is great news.

Just as it is great news that states are cutting taxes and enacting school choice.

More evidence that federalism is the way to go.

P.S. Arizona’s former Governor, Doug Ducey, was remarkably good on licensing and many other issues.

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Occupational Licensing: Another Way Politicians Hurt the Poor and Help their Cronies

Experts in the field of political marketing periodically tell me that you need to have sympathetic victims when trying to change policy.

• When pushing for Obamacare repeal, highlight a family who lost its health plan and now has to pay twice as much for insurance.
• When advocating for repeal of the death tax, publicize a small business that would be wiped out by that pernicious form of double taxation.
• When building support for tax relief, find an entrepreneur who is being driven into the ground by capricious and excessive demands.

That’s probably good advice. When people have real-world examples – especially ones they can relate to – that presumably helps them understand the need for a reform.

I have to admit, however, that my approach is generally more wonky. Whether I’m meeting with a policymaker, giving a speech, or writing a column, I view my role as trying to help people understand one or more basic economic concepts (the importance of lower marginal tax rates, for example).

I think there’s value in my approach (if people grasp an underlying principle, that can impact their understanding of both current and future policy fights). But there’s no reason why I shouldn’t do both.

So I’m going to begin today’s column about occupational licensing (when state governments impose restrictions and regulations that limit who can work in a particular field) with a sympathy-eliciting example that hopefully will resonate with readers.

Consider what happened in New York City recently now that bureaucrats have decided that people couldn’t be dog sitters without going through all the red tape to become a licensed kennel.

Pet lovers are barking mad over a little-known city rule that makes dog-sitting illegal in New York. Health Department rules ban anyone from taking money to care for an animal outside a licensed kennel — and the department has warned a popular pet-sitting app that its users are breaking the law. “The laws are antiquated,” said Chad Bacon, 29, a dog sitter in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with the app Rover. “If you’re qualified and able to provide a service, I don’t think you should be penalized.” Bacon, a former zookeeper and wildlife researcher, signed up for the app to help make ends meet while he was between jobs, but did enough business that he now makes his living from it full-time.

Now that we’ve identified Mr. Bacon as our sympathetic example, let’s look at the broader issue of the government creating barriers to employment and entrepreneurship.

The health code bans boarding, feeding and grooming animals for a fee without a kennel license — and says those licenses can’t be issued for private homes. …at least two apartment residents were slapped with violations in November and December for caring for pets without a permit. Fines start at $1,000. “If you’ve got a 14-year-old getting paid to feed your cats, that’s against the law right now,” said Rover’s general counsel John Lapham. “Most places right now continue to make it easier to watch children than animals, and that doesn’t make any sense.”

By the way, that’s not an argument for regulating babysitting (the kind of nonsense you might find in California). Instead, it’s a reason why state governments shouldn’t be going overboard with licensing rules.

The Institute for Justice just released a study on licensing rules for jobs that generally employ lower-skilled individuals.

Occupational licensing is, put simply, government permission to work in a particular field. In the 1950s, about one in 20 American workers needed an occupational license before they could work in the occupation of their choice. Today, that figure stands at about one in four. Securing an occupational license may require education or experience, exams, fees, and more, and working without one can mean fines or even jail time. …Policymakers, scholars and opinion leaders left, right and center are increasingly recognizing that licensing comes with high costs—fewer job opportunities and steeper prices—and does little to improve quality or protect consumers. …Most of the 102 occupations are practiced in at least one state without state licensing and apparently without widespread harm. Only 23 of these occupations are licensed by 40 states or more.

The last section of that excerpt is critically important. Special interests argue that occupational licensing somehow protects people, yet we have real-world examples for all 102 professions of states that have zero licensing restrictions and we don’t have examples of people dying or being harmed because of unregulated florists or rogue cosmetologists.

And shouldn’t there be some evidence of societal benefit before government restricts economic freedom (the same argument I’ve used when analyzing OSHA)?

As you might imagine, some states are worse than others. Here’s a map showing the degree to which state politicians conspire with special interests to create cartels in various fields. Louisiana and Washington are the worst (based on number of licensed professions) and Wyoming and Vermont (yes, that Vermont) are the least onerous.

Having written about a horrible example of occupational licensing in DC, I’m surprised that the District of Columbia isn’t at the bottom of the rankings. Or Alabama.

Though I’m not surprised to see that Oregon is green.

Here’s the report’s accompany video.

If you liked that video, you can click here for another video on occupational licensing.

A column by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic highlights some of the findings in the IJ study.

…in Connecticut, a home-entertainment installer is required to obtain a license from the state before serving customers. It costs applicants $185. To qualify, they must have a 12th-grade education, complete a test, and accumulate one year of apprenticeship experience in the field. A typical aspirant can expect the licensing process to delay them 575 days. …Occupational-licensing obstacles are much more common than they once were. “In the 1950s, about one in 20 American workers needed an occupational license before they could work in the occupation of their choice,” the report states. “Today, that figure stands at about one in four.”

And he points out that consumers and workers (those outside the cartel) are the victims.

These requirements…are at their most pernicious when they are both needless and most burdensome to the middle class, the working class, and recent immigrants to a society. The IJ report focuses its attention on these cases, surveying 102 lower-income occupations across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It concludes that “most of the 102 occupations are practiced in at least one state without state licensing and apparently without widespread harm.” In other words, dropping many of those requirements likely wouldn’t do any harm. …Too often, occupational-licensing laws are less about protecting workers or consumers as a class than they are about protecting the interests of incumbents. Want to compete with me? Good luck, now that I’ve lobbied for a law that requires you to shell out cash and work toward a certificate before you can begin.

The Wall Street Journal also opined about IJ’s new report.

More than ever, the government requires Americans to get permission to earn a living. In the 1950s one in 20 workers needed a license to work; now about one in four do. The rules hurt the working poor in particular, but everyone suffers in states with the most licensing requirements… Hawaii’s prerequisites are the most grueling while Louisiana and Washington regulate the most professions, with both states requiring a license for 77 lower-income fields. …California has the most dysfunctional regime. Across professions, it has established “a nearly impenetrable thicket of bureaucracy” where “no one could” provide a “list of all the licensed occupations,” as one state oversight agency admitted last year. …The cost and time to obtain a license is no accident, as professional guild members sit on state licensing boards and reinforce the racket. They want to limit competition to keep prices high. …Stiff licensing requirements are often prohibitive for America’s working poor, keeping them trapped in low-wage, low-skill jobs. …Nationwide, licensing drives up prices by as much as $203 billion annually. The requirements also hurt consumers by restricting access to goods and services.

The WSJ editorial points out that both political parties are guilty of supporting these insidious cartels.

Here’s an example, from Reason, of Democrats behaving badly.

California Democrats prattle endlessly about helping the working poor, but their latest vote against a bill that would tangibly help financially struggling people shows that Democratic leaders are more interested in serving their real constituencies: state bureaucracies, unions and other interest groups that want to keep out the competition. …California has the nation’s highest poverty rates, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau standard that includes cost-of-living factors. A good starting place to address that problem is to chip away at unnecessary barriers to work. Trade groups, however, recognize that the best way to inflate their members’ pay is to raise the cost of entry for others—and the more fields regulated this way, the more it keeps poor people in the welfare lines. …Such concerns prompted even the Democratic Obama administration to call for far-reaching licensing reforms, yet California’s Democrats don’t even seem to understand the point of such efforts. Or maybe they just won’t let themselves understand the argument, given their political alliances.

And Reason also identifies a Republican behaving badly.

Otter is bending to the wishes of other special interests. In vetoing the licensing reform bill—a bill that would have done little more than reduce the number of hours of training before someone could be licensed to cut hair or apply makeup from 800 to 600—Otter said objections voiced by the state Board of Cosmetology and the State Board of Barber Examiners should overrule the majority of the state legislature. …”For years, Butch Otter has given great speeches about the need for a free economy and limited, constitutionally-based government,” said Wayne Hoffman, president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a free market think tank, in a statement about the two vetoes. “Yet once again, Gov. Otter has rejected sensible, conservative, bipartisan liberty-based legislation that would have put Idaho entrepreneurs back to work and would have protected constitutional rights of Idahoans.”

Let’s close with an image that is both amusing and sad. Amusing because it mocks government and sad because it’s true. It’s basically the cartoon version of something I shared last year.

P.S. Returning to the issue of political marketing, I actually do use real-world examples for some purposes. My Bureaucrat Hall of Fame is nothing but horror stories about specific government employees pillaging taxpayers. and my collection of honest leftists also is based on specific stories of statists inadvertently revealing something important.

P.P.S. Business permits at the local level also are akin to occupational licenses. Governments are making people pay to become entrepreneurs. Which oftentimes translates into painful lessons for young people about government greed.

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Occupational Licensing, Government Thuggery, and Greed-Fueled Cronyism

What word best describes the actions of government? Would it be greed? How about thuggery? Or cronyism?

Writing for Reason, Eric Boehm has a story showing that “all of the above” may be the right answer.

At first it seems like a story about government greed.

When Mats Järlström’s wife got snagged by one of Oregon’s red light cameras in 2013, he challenged the ticket by questioning the timing of the yellow lights at intersections where cameras had been installed. Since then, his research into red light cameras has earned him attention in local and national media—in 2014, he presented his evidence on an episode of “60 Minutes”…on how too-short yellow lights were making money for the state by putting the public’s safety at risk.

Three cheers for Mr. Järlström. Just like Jay Beeber, he’s fighting against local governments that put lives at risk by using red-light cameras as a revenue-raising scam.

But then it became a story about government thuggery.

…the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying…threatened him. Citing state laws that make it illegal to practice engineering without a license, the board told Järlström that even calling himself an “electronics engineer” and the use of the phrase “I am an engineer” in his letter were enough to “create violations.” Apparently the threats weren’t enough, because the board follow-up in January of this year by officially fining Järlström $500 for the supposed crime of “practicing engineering without being registered.”

Gasp, imagine the horror of having unregistered engineers roaming the state! Though one imagines that the government’s real goal is to punish Järlström for threatening its red-light revenue racket.

But if you continue reading the story, it’s also about cronyism. The Board apparently wants to stifle competition, even if it means trying to prevent people from making true statements.

Järlström is…arguing that it’s unconstitutional to prevent someone from doing math without the government’s permission. …The notion that it’s somehow illegal for Järlström to call himself an engineer is absurd. He has a degree in electrical engineering from Sweden… it’s not the first time the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying has been overly aggressive…the state board investigated Portland City Commissioner Dan Saltzman in 2014 for publishing a campaign pamphlet that mentioned Saltzman’s background as an “environmental engineer.” Saltzman has a bachelor’s degree in environmental and civil engineering from Cornell University, a master’s degree from MIT’s School of Civil Engineering, and is a membership of the American Society of Civil Engineers

In other words, this is yet another example of how politicians and special interests use “occupational licensing” as a scam.

The politicians get to impose “fees” in exchange for letting people practice a profession.

And the interest groups get to impose barriers that limit competition.

A win-win situation, at least if you’re not a taxpayer or consumer.

Or a poor person who wants to get a job.

Some of the examples of occupational licensing would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that people are being denied the right to engage in voluntary exchange.

Such as barriers against people who want to help deaf people communicate.

If you want to help a deaf person communicate in Wisconsin, you’ll have to get permission from the state government first. Wisconsin is one of a handful of states to require a license for sign language interpreters, and the state also issues licenses for interior designers, bartenders, and dieticians despite no clear evidence that any of those professions constitute a risk to public health in other states without similar licensing rules. …It’s hard to imagine any health and safety benefits to mandatory licensing for sign language interpreters, which is one of eight licenses highlighted in a new report from Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty, a conservative group. …Since 1996, the number of licensed professions in the Badger State has grown from 90 to 166—an increase of 84 percent, according to the report. Licensing cost Wisconsin more than 30,000 jobs over the last 20 years and adds an additional $1.9 billion annually in consumer costs.

Or restricting the economic liberty of dog walkers.

…according to the Colorado government, people who watch pets for money are breaking the law unless if they can get licensed as a commercial kennel—a requirement that is costly and unrealistic for people working out of their homes, often as a side job. This is not simply a case of an outdated law failing to accommodate modern technology. There are more nefarious motives—those of special interests who want to protect their profits by keeping out new competition. …it is time to add “Big Kennel” to the list of special interests that support ridiculous occupational licensing schemes.

Or trying to deny rights, as in the case of horse masseuses.

…an Arizona state licensing board finally backed down from an expensive, unnecessary mandate that nearly forced three women to give up their careers as animal masseuses. …the Arizona State Veterinary Medical Examining Board said it would no longer require animal massage practitioners, who provide therapeutic services to dogs, horses, and other animals, to obtain a veterinary license. Obtaining that license requires years of post-graduate schooling, which can cost as much as $250,000. “All I want is the freedom to do my job, and I have that now,” Celeste Kelly, one of three plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement. …the state board tried to driver her out of business by threatening her with fines and jail time if she didn’t get a veterinary license.

The good news is that there’s a growing campaign to get rid of these disgusting restrictions of voluntary exchange.

The acting head of the Federal Trade Commission is getting involved. On the right side of the issue!

Maureen K. Ohlhausen, the new acting chair of the Federal Trade Commission, thinks it’s high time that the FTC start giving more than lip service to its traditional mandate of fostering economic liberty. And the first item in her crosshairs is the burgeoning growth in occupational licenses. Over the past several decades, licensing requirements have multiplied like rabbits, she noted. Only 5 percent of the workforce needed a license in 1950, but somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of all American workers need one today. …depending on where you live, you might need a license to be an auctioneer, interior designer, makeup artist, hair braider, potato shipper, massage therapist or manicurist. “The health and safety arguments about why these occupations need to be licensed range from dubious to ridiculous,” Ohlhausen said. “I challenge anyone to explain why the state has a legitimate interest in protecting the public from rogue interior designers carpet-bombing living rooms with ugly throw pillows.”

Hooray for Ms. Ohlhausen. She’s directing the FTC to do something productive, which is a nice change of pace for a bureaucracy that has been infamous in past years for absurd enforcement of counterproductive antitrust laws.

A column in the Wall Street Journal highlights Mississippi’s reforms.

State lawmakers in Mississippi are taking the need for reform to heart. Two weeks ago Gov. Phil Bryant signed into law H.B. 1425, which will significantly rein in licensing boards. …H.B. 1425 explicitly endorses competition and says that the state’s policy is to “use the least restrictive regulation necessary to protect consumers from present, significant and substantiated harms.” Under the law, the governor, the secretary of state, and the attorney general must review and approve all new regulations from professional licensing boards to ensure compliance with the new legal standard. This should be a model for other states. …Mississippi’s law…covers all licensing boards controlled by industry participants, spells out a pro-competition test, and requires new rules to be approved by elected officials accountable to voters. Mississippi has smartly targeted the core problem: Anticompetitive regulations harm the economy, slow job growth, and raise consumer prices.

Here’s some of the national data in the WSJ column.

Keep in mind, as you read these numbers, that poor people disproportionately suffer as a result of these regulatory barriers to work.

In the 1950s only about 1 in 20 American workers needed a license, but now roughly 1 in 4 do. This puts a real burden on the economy. A 2012 study by the Institute for Justice examined 102 low-income and middle-income occupations. The average license cost $209 and required nine months of training and one state exam. …Even the Obama administration saw the problem. A 2015 report from the White House said that licensing can “reduce employment opportunities and lower wages for excluded workers.” In 2011 three academic economists estimated that these barriers have result in 2.85 million fewer jobs nationwide, while costing consumers $203 billion a year thanks to decreased competition.

Professor Tyler Cowen explains in Time that licensing laws explain in part the worrisome decline in mobility in America.

Some of the decline in labor mobility may stem from…the growth of occupational licensure. While once only doctors and medical professionals required licenses to practice, now it is barbers, interior decorators, electricians, and yoga trainers. More and more of these licensing restrictions are added on, but few are ever taken away, in part because the already licensed established professionals lobby for the continuation of the restrictions. In such a world, it is harder to move into a new state and, without preparation and a good deal of investment, set up a new business in a licensed area.

Last but not least, we have a candidate for the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame. Elizabeth Nolan Brown explains for Reason that a paper pusher in Florida managed to use occupational licensing fees as a tool of self-enrichment.

In Palm Beach County, Florida, all topless dancers are required to register with county officials and obtain an Adult Entertainment Work Identification Card (AEIC), at the cost of $75 per year. The regulation is ridiculous for a lot of reasons, but at least applicants—many of whom are paid exclusively in cash—were able to pay the government-ID fee with cash, too, making things a little more convenient and a little less privacy-invading. But not anymore, thanks to the alleged actions of one sticky-fingered government employee. …Pedemy “diverted” at least $28,875 (and possibly an additional $3,305) from county coffers between October 2013 and mid-November 2016. The money came from both adult-entertainer fees—approximately 70 percent of which were paid in cash—and court-ordered payments intended for a crime Victims Services Fund.

At the end of the article, Ms. Brown looks at the bigger issue and asks what possible public purpose is being served by stripper licensing.

Demanding strippers be licensed in the first place is a problem… There’s no legitimate public-safety or consumer-protection element to the requirement—strip club patrons don’t care if the woman wriggling on their laps is properly permitted. Government officials have portrayed the measure as a means to stop human trafficking and the exploitation of minors, but that’s ludicrous; anyone willing to force someone else into sex or labor and circumvent much more serious rules with regard to age limits isn’t going to suddenly take pause over an occupational licensing rule they’ll have to skirt. The only ones truly affected are sex workers and adult-business owners. Not only does the regulation drive up their costs…, it gives Palm Beach regulators a database of anyone who’s ever taken their clothes off for money locally—leaving these records open to FOIA requests or hackers—and gives cops a pretense to check clubs at random to make sure there aren’t any unlicensed dancers. Those found to be dancing without a license can be arrested on a misdemeanor criminal charge.

Though I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised. If you peruse “Sex and Government,” you’ll find that politicians and bureaucrats like to stick their noses in all sorts of inappropriate places. Including the vital state interest of whether topless women should be allowed to cut hair without a license!

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Child Care, Head Start, Early Childhood Education, and Washington, D.C.’s Plan to Hurt Poor People

What federal program is most sacrosanct, even though it delivers poor results?

• Is it federal aid to education, which has plenty of defenders even though it is inversely related to school performance?
• Is it unemployment insurance, which has plenty of defenders even though it actually leads to higher levels of joblessness?
• Is it stimulus spending, which has plenty of defenders even though it produces debt rather than jobs in the real world?

Those are all good answers, and you could also add housing subsidies, the drug war, and lot of other example to the list of programs that enjoy lots of political support even though they produce bad results.

But I’m guessing that the activity that has the greatest level of undeserved support is government intervention for “pre-K” kids, with Head Start being the most prominent example.

I haven’t written about the failure of that particular program since 2013, which is unfortunate because two of the most compelling visuals about Head Start were released in 2014.

First, this AEI research reveals that the supposed academic consensus for the program evaporates under close examination.

Second, this table from an article in National Affairs shows that the program doesn’t produce long-run benefits.

Yet these empirical results don’t seem to influence the debate. Every year, programs such as Head Start get funded because politicians only seem to care about intentions.

And positive headlines for themselves, of course. After all, we’re supposed to believe that they care about kids because they spend other people’s money on programs with nice goals.

With this as background, now let’s zoom in on a specific example of how supposedly good intentions in this field translate into occupational restrictions that have very bad results for the less fortunate people in society.

The Washington Post reports that the city’s local government has decided that additional regulation is needed to boost the quality of programs for pre-K kids.

More than a decade after Washington, D.C., set out to create the most comprehensive public preschool system in the country, the city is directing its attention to overhauling the patchwork of programs that serve infants and toddlers.  The new regulations put the District at the forefront of a national effort to improve the quality of care and education for the youngest learners. City officials want to address an academic achievement gap between children from poor and middle-class families that research shows is already evident by the age of 18 months.

And what exactly did the city government propose to achieve these nice-sounding goals?

They’ve imposed “new licensing regulations…for child-care centers” that will mandate college degrees.

The District set the minimum credential for lead teachers as an associate degree… The deadline to earn the degree is December 2020. New regulations also call for child-care center directors to earn a bachelor’s degree and for home care providers and assistant teachers to earn a CDA.

Gee, this sounds nice. Don’t we all want the best-trained staff so that we can get the best outcomes for kids?

Yes, but let’s consider costs and benefits. Especially, as noted in the article, costs that are imposed on people without a lot of money who are working at childcare centers.

…for many child-care workers, often hired with little more than a high school diploma, returning to school is a difficult, expensive proposition with questionable reward. …prospects are slim that a degree will bring a significantly higher income — a bachelor’s degree in early-childhood education yields the lowest lifetime earnings of any major.

And poor people without a lot of money who are clients of childcare centers.

Many parents in the District are maxed out, paying among the highest annual tuitions nationally, at $1,800 a month.

And taxpayers who pick up part of the cost.

…government subsidies that help fund care…and generous funding for preschool.

In other words, imposing this kind of mandate will be rather expensive, especially for lower-income Washingtonians who either work at these centers of send their children to them.

That’s the cost side of the equation. Now let’s look at the benefits.

Except there’s no real-world evidence included in the article. Instead, all we get it some theorizing.

…a 2015 report by the National Academies that says the child-care workforce has not kept pace with the science of child development and early learning. From the first days of life, learning is complex and cumulative, the report says. Infants are capable of abstract thought, forming theories about what is happening in the physical world and whom to trust. Scientists concluded that teachers need the skills and insight to offer the kinds of learning experiences that challenge them and make them feel safe. They need tools to diagnose and intervene when they see learning or emotional problems. And they need literacy skills to introduce young learners to an expansive vocabulary, exposure many children do not have at home and are not getting in day care.

Scott Shackford of Reason is appropriately skeptical about this regulatory scheme.

Scientists say that higher education for pre-school child-care workers is a good idea. So of course D.C. is going to make it mandatory that child-care workers get associate’s degrees and completely screw over an entire class of lower-skilled workers. …The news story doesn’t engage in the question of why parents can’t decide for themselves how important it is for their child-care workers to have advanced degrees. Perhaps that’s because early education advocates might not like the answers, once the realities of the likely cost increases get factored in. …such a subsidy plan would not do much for lower-income families. And so not only would poorer families be even less able to afford child care, they’re also going to be locked out of jobs within the industry itself.

Though he does identify one group that would benefit.

To be sure, this D.C. law is a jobs program—it’s a jobs program for people who work in the field of post-secondary education itself. Nothing like using a regulatory mandate to create a demand for your educational services that might not exist otherwise. The story makes it abundantly clear that advocates for increased education of child-care workers—who, wouldn’t you know it, work in the field of education—want to spread this program well beyond D.C.’s borders.

And there’s another group of beneficiaries. The new DC regulations will be good news for childcare workers who already have college degrees. That’s because the city government is using a form of licensing to force competing workers out of the market (as Scott pointed out, the new rules “screw over…lower-skilled workers”). And that means that the college-educated workers will have more ability to extract higher salaries.

Just as unions urge higher minimum-wage mandates in order to undermine competition from other workers.

In other words, this is a classic “public choice” case study of a couple of interest groups using government coercion to unfairly line their pockets.

P.S. Speaking of public choice, here’s the real-world explanation of how a bill becomes law (h/t: Imgur).

Very accurate. I especially like the variation of Mitchell’s Law at the end.

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Occupational Licensing: How Government-Created Barriers to Work Are Undermining Mobility and America’s Economy

Red tape is a huge burden on the American economy, with even an Obama Administration bureaucracy acknowledging that costs far exceed supposed benefits.

And the problem gets worse every year.

If I had to pick the worst example of foolish regulation, there would be lots of absurd examples from the federal government, and the crazy bureaucrats at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission probably would be at the top of the list.

But the worst regulations, at least if measured by the harm to lower-income Americans, probably are imposed by state governments. Yes, I’m talking about the scourge of occupational licensing.

A report published by The American Interest elaborates on this problem.

…it’s important that policymakers don’t lose sight of more subtle ways the government has distorted the economy to favor the politically connected. One example: Onerous occupational licensing laws that force people to undergo thousands of hours of often redundant and gratuitous training to perform jobs like auctioneering, tree trimming, and hair styling. …licensing laws are the result of higher-skilled professionals seeking to protect their market share at the consumers’ expense. …This not just a minor concern for a few key industries; it is a weight dragging down the entire economy, raising prices while blocking access to less-skilled trades. The Obama administration has already recommended that states look at ways to loosen these requirements.

Yes, you read correctly. This is an issue where the Obama Administration was basically on the right side.

I’m not joking. Here are excerpts from a White House statement last year.

Today nearly one-quarter of all U.S. workers need a government license to do their jobs. The prevalence of occupational licensing has risen from less than 5 percent in the early 1950s with the majority of the growth coming from an increase in the number of professions that require a license rather than composition in the workforce. …the current system often requires unnecessary training, lengthy delays, or high fees. This can in turn artificially create higher costs for consumers and prohibit skilled American workers like florists or hairdressers from entering jobs in which they could otherwise excel.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah is a strong advocate of curtailing these protectionist regulations and allowing capitalism to flourish. Using teeth-whitening services as an example, he explained the downside of government-enforced cartels in an article for Forbes.

Should only dentists be allowed to whiten people’s teeth? …This may sound like a silly question… Keep in mind that the Food and Drug Administration already regulates teeth-whitening products for safety and that virtually no one has ever been injured by someone administering these products. But in a number of states throughout the country, dentists began losing teeth-whitening customers to non-dentists who had set up kiosks in shopping malls and were charging less money for the same teeth-whitening services. These upset dentists then went to their state dental-licensing boards and urged those boards to add teeth whitening to the definition of “the practice of dentistry.” These state boards complied… The results were unemployed teeth whiteners, more expensive teeth whitening, and higher profits for the dentists. …An organized cartel (the dentists)…used the threat of government punishment to enforce their monopoly.

Unfortunately, Senator Lee explains, this is a problem that goes way beyond teeth whitening.

…when the deeper question of occupational licensing is applied to the broader economy, it turns out that there are millions of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars at stake. …dentists are not the only professionals using government power to harm consumers and line their pockets. A 2013 study found that 25% of today’s workforce is in an occupation licensed by a state entity, up from just 5% in 1950. And the number of licensed professionals is not growing because everyone is suddenly becoming a doctor or a lawyer. Instead, it is the number of professions requiring licenses that is growing. Security guards, florists, barbers, massage therapists, interior decorators, manicurists, hair stylists, personal trainers, tree trimmers and auctioneers work in just some of the many, many professions that state legislatures have seen fit to cartelize.

But do consumers get some sort of benefit as a result of all this red tape?

Nope.

According to a study by University of Minnesota Professor Morris Kleiner, “Occupational licensing has either no impact or even a negative impact on the quality of services provided to customers by members of the regulated occupation.” Occupational licensing has grown not because consumers demanded it, but because lobbyists recognized a business opportunity where they could use government power to get rich at the public’s expense. …Consumers end up paying $200 billion in higher costs annually, prospective professionals lose an estimated three million jobs, and millions more Americans find it harder to live where they want due to licensing requirements.

By the way, the barriers to mobility are a major problem. A professor at Yale Law School crunched the numbers and found that occupational licensing has undermined the great America tradition of moving where the jobs are.

Here are some details from the abstract of the study.

Rates of inter-state mobility, by most estimates, have been falling for decades. Even research that does not find a general decline finds that inter-state mobility rates are low among disadvantaged groups and are not increasing despite a growing connection between moving and economic opportunity. …governments, mostly at the state and local levels, have created a huge number of legal barriers to inter-state mobility. Land-use laws and occupational licensing regimes limit entry into local and state labor markets.

In an article for Reason, Ronald Bailey highlights some of the key findings from the scholarly study.

From the end of World War II through the 1980s, the Census Bureau reports, about 20 percent of Americans changed their residences annually, with more than 3 percent moving to a different state each year. Now more are staying home. In November, the Census Bureau reported that Americans were moving at historically low rates: Only 11.2 percent moved in 2015, and just 1.5 percent moved to a different state. …Yale law professor David Schleicher blames bad public policy. …Schleicher identifies and analyzes the policies that limit people’s ability to enter job-rich markets and exit job-poor ones. …Why? First, lots of job-rich areas have erected barriers that keep job-seekers from other regions out. The two biggest barriers are land use and occupational licensing restrictions. …Schleicher notes that more than 1,100 occupations require licensing in at least one state, but fewer than 60 are regulated in all states. A 2015 White House report on occupational licensing found that “interstate migration rates for workers in the most licensed occupations are lower by an amount equal to nearly 15 percent of the average migration rate compared to those in the least licensed occupations.”

Let’s close by putting this in practical terms.

Imagine you don’t have a lot of education. And you definitely don’t have out-of-state licenses that are necessary for dozens of professions.

Are you going to move where there are more jobs?

Several decades ago, the answer likely was yes. Now, the incentive for mobility has been curtailed thanks to licensing laws that are really nothing more than regulatory protectionism.

Such laws should be repealed, or struck down by the courts as illegal restraints on trade.

P.S. Here’s some dark libertarian humor on this topic.

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Critical Charts about the Future of the American Economy and the 2016 Election?

James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute has an intriguing idea. Instead of a regular debate, he would like presidential candidates to respond to a handful of charts from the recent Economic Report of the President that supposedly highlight very important issues.

We’d quickly find out — I hope — who has real deep knowledge on key economic issues and challenges facing America.

I don’t always agree with Pethokoukis’ views (see here, here, and here), but he has a very good idea. He may not have picked the charts I would rank as most important, but I think 5 of the 6 charts he shared are worthy of discussion (I’m not persuaded that the one about government R&D spending has much meaning).

Let’s look at them and elaborate on why they are important.

We’ll start with the chart of labor productivity growth, which has been declining over time.

I think this is a very important chart since productivity growth is a good proxy for the growth in living standards (workers, especially in the long run, get paid on the basis of what they produce).

So what should we think about the depressing trend of declining productivity numbers?

First, some of it is unavoidable. The United States has an advanced economy and we don’t have a lot of “low-hanging fruit” to exploit. Simply stated, it’s much easier to boost labor productivity in a poor country.

Second, to the degree we want to boost labor productivity, more investment is the best option. That’s why I’m so critical of class-warfare policies that penalize capital formation. When politicians go after the “evil” and “bad” rich people who save and invest, workers wind up being victimized because there’s less saving and investment.

But this isn’t just an issue of machines, equipment, and technology. We also should consider human capital, which is why it is a horrible scandal that America spends more on education – on a per-capita basis – than any other nation, yet we get very mediocre results because of a government monopoly school system that – at least in practice – seems designed to protect the privileges of teacher unions.

The next chart looks at the number of companies entering and exiting the economy. As you can see, the number of businesses that are disappearing is relatively stable, but there’s been a disturbing decline in the rate of new-company formation.

As with the first chart, some of this may simply be an inevitable trend. In a mature economy, perhaps the rate of entrepreneurship declines?

But that’s not intuitively obvious, and I certainly haven’t seen any evidence to suggest why that should be the case.

So this chart presumably isn’t good news.

Some of the bad news is probably because of bad government policy (capital gains taxes, regulatory barriers, licensing mandates, etc) and some of it may reflect undesirable cultural trends (less entrepreneurship, more risk-aversion, more dependency).

Speaking of which, the next chart looks at the share of the workforce that is regulated by licensing laws.

This is a very disturbing trend.

Licensing rules basically act as government-created barriers to entry and they are especially harmful to poor people who often lack the time and money to jump through the hoops necessary to get some sort of government-mandated certification.

By the way, this is one area where the federal government is not the problem. These are mostly restrictions imposed by state governments.

The next chart looks at how much money is earned by the rich in each country.

I think this chart is very important, but only in the sense that any intelligent candidate should know enough to say that it’s almost completely irrelevant and misleading.

The economy is not a fixed pie. Income earned by the “rich” is not at the expense of the rest of us (assuming honest markets rather than government cronyism). It doesn’t matter if the rich are earning more money. What matters is whether there’s growth and mobility for people on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.

A good candidate should say the chart should be replaced by far more important variables, such as what’s happening to median household income.

Lastly, here’s a chart comparing construction costs with housing prices.

This data is important because you might expect there to be a close link between construction costs and home prices, yet that hasn’t been the case in recent years.

There may be perfectly reasonable explanations for the lack of a link (increased demand and/or changing demographics, for instance).

But in all likelihood, there may be some undesirable reasons for this data, such as Fannie-Freddie subsidies and restrictionist zoning policies.

As with the licensing chart, this is an area where the federal government doesn’t deserve all the blame. Bad zoning policies exist because local governments are catering to the desires of existing property owners.

By the way, while I think Pethokoukis shared some worthwhile charts, I would have augmented his list with charts on the rising burden of government spending, the tax code’s discrimination against income that is saved and invested, declining labor-force participation, changes in economic freedom, and the ever-expanding regulatory burden.

If candidates didn’t understand those charts and/or didn’t offer good solutions, they would be disqualifying themselves (at least for voters who want a better future).

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Occupational Licensing: A Case Study of How Regulation Harms Poor People

What’s the best way to understand the burden of government regulation and red tape?

Is it better to focus on the overall burden by sharing data about aggregate cost, job losses, time wasted, and foregone growth?

Or is it better to look at specific examples of regulatory foolishness, such as silly rules that force consumers to use crummy dishwashers, inferior light bulbs, substandard toilets, and inadequate washing machines?

If the latter approach is best, we have a great (in a bad sense) new example.

Nicole Carroll of CrossFit has a column in the Washington Post that dissects a disturbing new regulatory scheme from the busy-body local government.

D.C….government is developing misguided regulations that would add burdensome red tape to the most innovative fitness programs. Specifically, the D.C. Council has enacted a law — the first in the nation — that would define what personal fitness trainers can and cannot do, require them to register.

Just in case you think this sounds reasonable in theory (and you shouldn’t), take a look at what it means in practice.

If early drafts of the regulations are advanced, D.C. fitness trainers will have to divert their attention from improving lives to bureaucratic burdens: taking courses they don’t need, adhering to methods they don’t believe in, paying fees that will be passed on to their clients and looking over their shoulders at ever-present regulators. The draft regulations even call for a four-year college degree.

Huh?!? Why would a personal trainer need a college degree? And why should trainers be forced to take courses or follow one-size-fits-all methodologies?

Sounds like a bunch of red tape that will make it hard for low-income people to become trainers.

And what will this mean for consumers?

Well, higher costs at the very least.

The immediate impact would be to make fitness programs less accessible, more expensive and more elitist. Thousands of residents would lose the opportunity to follow programs that will help them get stronger, lose weight and enjoy a better quality of life.

Sound like a lose-lose proposition, right?

Who could be for such a bad idea? Why are D.C. politicians pushing such a foolish plan?

The answer is special-interest corruption.

…entrenched interests can drive up costs and close markets for competitors, preventing new products and services from improving the status quo. The groups pushing hardest for licensure are entrenched institutions such as the American College of Sports Medicine, the National Strength and Conditioning Association and the Register of Exercise Professionals. …a not-so-credible agenda to defend their long-established but increasingly threatened business models and stifle successful competition. They want the licensing because they will profit from it. For those in the Exercise Industrial Complex, the fear of disruptive competition explains why they want to make the District the first jurisdiction in the nation to regulate fitness programs.

Here’s the bottom line.

Instead of raising standards, burdensome regulations would have the effect of driving newcomers out of the industry — and pricing many moderate-income people out of fitness programs.

Licensing and regulation of personal trainers is just one example of a worrisome trend in governments across the country.

This video from the Institute for Justice has disturbing details of how special interests conspire with politicians in various states to impose high burdens that make it hard for people to work.

Isn’t this typical? Politicians always claim to be for the little guy, but licensing rules are all about erecting high barriers to protect entrenched incumbents from competition.

This chart shows how much time and money is needed to work in certain professions that generally use lower-income workers.

By the way, the same principle applies to the tax system. The political elites often argue against a flat tax because it would be a boon to the rich.

But it’s the powerful and well-connected that benefit from the Byzantine system of credits, exemptions, deductions, exclusions, preferences, and other loopholes in the tax code.

Rest assured that poor people aren’t hiring all the high-paid lobbyists that specialize in manipulating the tax code in Washington. Which is why honest and well-intentioned leftists should support real tax reform. Just like they should support sweeping deregulation.

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