03/28/2024

Opinion: Licenses to Kill Opportunity

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, as a new and comprehensive report by the Institute for Justice (IJ) illustrates

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. California’s door repairmen, carpenters and landscapers must first rack up 1,460 days of supervised on-the-job experience, then pay more than $500 for the license, before they can work as a contractor.

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