Job Licensing Requirements Need Serious Scrutiny

Should you really need a license to teach hair braiding?

I’d earned a master’s degree in social work and had no idea what auditing was when I showed up in Nashville in 1978 to work for the Tennessee state auditor. Tennessee, like many other states, had enacted a sunset law mandating legislative review of every agency, board and commission to determine whether they should be abolished, restructured or continued. The auditor was required to do performance audits for each of them and needed to add staff with social science training.

My experience in Tennessee left me with a view of sunset laws less cynical than that of many people in public administration. While major agencies are almost certainly never going to be terminated under a sunset law, the audits and the legislative review process can bring significant benefits. A November 2017 audit of the Tennessee Corrections Department, for example, found major problems in its management of a private prison contractor.

But the cynics are correct that these laws have largely not resulted in reductions in state regulations or abolition of unnecessary programs. One form of regulation in particular, occupational licensing, has been spreading like kudzu. The Brookings Institution reported recently that it now covers around 30 percent of the U.S. workforce, up from 5 percent in the 1950s.

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