How the Feds Can Cut Down on Onerous Employment Restrictions

The U.S. government has an opportunity to improve economic freedom.

By and
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Whether it’s requiring a license to arrange flowers or limits on pharmacists administering vaccines, excessive barriers to work and care are a nationwide problem without an obvious nationwide solution. Occupational licensing—which affects industries from cosmetology to the building trades to law and medicine—is largely the purview of state and local governments.

However, as the largest employer in the United States, there are steps the federal government can take to help boost economic freedom while respecting federalism.

Including the armed forces, the executive branch employs more than 4 million people. Recent estimates peg the total federal workforce as high as 9.1 million when considering federal contractors and grant employees. In comparison, Walmart is reportedly the largest private employer in the country with around 1.5 million workers. Given that the total United States civilian workforce hovers around 160 million, the federal government’s employment reach accounts for at least 5 percent of the nation’s workforce. Government workers are also more likely to be required to have a license than are those who work in the private sector.

One proposal, from Tennessee Republican Rep. Diana Harshbarger, could help remove red tape and decrease unnecessary licensing requirements. The Freedom to Work Act, introduced on Wednesday, would require that every two years, the head of each federal executive agency review any regulation or federal law pertaining to their agency that imposes licensing requirements for employees or contractors, or even causes a state or local government to adopt a licensing requirement. The agency head must then identify what changes could remove or reduce each burden to its “least restrictive alternative,” while maintaining consumer protection and safety. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Chris

    What a pleasant surprise to see Shoshana Weissmann writing about occupational licensing reform at The Dispatch!

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    Tracie

    In healthcare, I wish there were more mobility between credential levels, especially at the less credentialed but substantially experienced end of the spectrum.

    If I had money to throw at anything, I'd devote it to helping CNAs transition to being LPNs, who can then - in theory, at least - train up to be RNs. Like most medical facilities, the one I work in is perpetually short of CNAs and they're our backbone workforce. As an occupational therapist, I work alongside CNAs every day and I have to be aware who the good ones are. There is no substitute for learning to handle patients than simply doing it every day. It's a certain kind of person who excels at that work.

    When I consider that they could work in fast food for about the same money, and work in an Amazon warehouse for considerably more, I realize that a sense of vocation and wanting to help people is the main reason any of them do it. The Medi-car drivers (always men) who insist that patients be ready and in their wheelchairs when they arrive make as much if not more money than the people who do the (often, literally) back-breaking labor to get the patients ready for them to drive to their destinations. I wonder often if credentials have something to do with this perversion of priorities.

    CNAs have very little prospect to make more money without increasing their training and credentials, and nobody I'm aware of is making it easier for them. We have such a nursing shortage in this country. We're importing trained RNs from other countries, when we have this workforce of people with patient care experience who we burnout, injure, don't respect, and don't offer much guidance for a better future.

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    Jason Gibson

    Finally something a little hopeful

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    Stephanie

    I'm familiar with the licensing requirements for nurse practitioners (being one) and also with the issue about the dental hygienists. Scope of practice is determined by the law in each state.

    However, it's not appropriate to blame "government" for this situation. It's not a "big government power grab" at least in those occupations.

    The American Medical Association has from the beginning determined to prevent economic competition from other health professionals, such as nurse practitioners, whose educational preparation enables us to perform at least 80% of what MDs do, in both community and hospital settings.

    The AMA has a state medical association in each state which systematically lobbies--often successfully--state legislators to defeat any enabling legislation for nurse practitioners, citing "safety" issues and spreading disinformation.

    The dental hygienists are in much the same position, vis-a-vis the professional dental associations.

    Other occupations--I wouldn't know. But I'm sure in many cases it's not the government. It's the people currently providing services in those fields, who most likely don't want the job market diluted and lower revenues overall.

    That was the reason many medical schools closed down about 100 years ago. It was done deliberately, to divide patients and income among a smaller number of doctors.

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    1. Jeff

      While I agree with you that industry lobbies work very hard to protect their industries, that doesn't at all let the governments of the several states off the hook. You can lobby someone very hard, and yet they choose to ignore your pleas. Ultimately it is state legislators that create these licensing regimes, and empower these lobbying organizations or their offshoots to enforce them. It is the state legislatures who can fix this.

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      Tracie

      I'm a nursing home therapist. The go-to person in our building for medical issues is the main Nurse Practitioner. The doctors make their rounds once or twice a week. Some of them spend a lot of time bedside, but some a patient is lucky to get 10min with.

      If it gave me a little more time to discuss my issues and have a human being who really knew me, I'd take an NP over an MD any day for primary care. If you need a specialist, get a specialist.

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    Victor Clairmont

    If we can cut down the requirements for a barbers license (some states 800 hours), by all means go ahead.

    It’s just hair people! It (mostly) grows back.

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    Rochejaquelein

    The Dispatch really is letting its readership down and dancing at the edge of ethical lines by not fulling disclosing the ties one of the authors has to the global sloth industry, traditionally highly regulated to protect the American livestock industry and, many would say, American children, from the threat of uncontrolled sloth predation.

    Look at the GDP in nations in which sloths have established themselves compared to areas in which the state regulates sloth ownership. The numbers speak for themselves. One can be in favor of small government and still believe in a night watchman state to defend the public against murder, cholera and sloths.

    At least one of the authors is I fear getting an envelope slipped into her purse for this piece. A very, very, very, very, very slow envelope, but still.

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  7. Shaybult

    My husband (libertarian/conservative) and I (liberal/libertarian) are both big fans of occupational licensing reform. I absolutely believe some occupations require licensing, but even the ones that need it often have unnecessarily complex and expensive requirements.

    Part of the problem seems to be a tendency, as new services and occupations crop up, to shoehorn them into existing regulations - e.g., requiring hair braiders to have the same licensing as hair salons. (I actually don't think hair salons need licensing either, bit that's not my point.)

    Another problem is that the licensing requirements are often poorly written, leading to all kinds of nonsense when they are interpreted for enforcement.

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  8. Jon

    An entire piece without mentioning the things that the federal government that do that is most damaging and has no business being in:

    1. Minimum Wage
    2. FMLA
    3. Healthcare Mandates
    4. Employment Taxes

    Instead this article talks about things around the edges.

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    1. tla

      As a small business owner, I think red tape is much more problematic than taxes (within reason). My biggest problem with FMLA and Healthcare Mandates are the bureaucratic nonsense often associated with both of them. I much rather pay an extra tax than jump through legal paperwork and worry about compliance. I am happy to comply by paying a little extra. Red tape serves either the entrenched or larger business that have the economy of scale to deal with onerous compliance measures.

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    2. Steve's Spanish wine

      Welcome to the world of regulatory reform. You need to understand 2 things:
      1.You may consider licensing and practice scope reform to be "around the edges" but the federal code is filled with many of these types of issues that add up to billions of dollars in added cost and complexity which translates into decreased output and reduced innovation.
      2. Fixing such issues a lot of the times doesn't require legislative action, which is really important when you are times of deadlocked congresses and high levels of political dysfunction.

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    3. Shaybult

      The article us about occupational licensing, not any of those other things. (Although I'll admit the title may have been misleading.)

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  9. Kevin Brady

    Very interesting piece - loads of great info with a low word count, much appreciated! Licensing is one of those issues that may not be 'sexy' or part of the culture wars, but easing those restrictions can make a difference on the ground, and I'm glad there are senators/reps working on it.

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  10. Sergio C

    Impressive that the Dispatch was able to get the Senator from East Virginia to write this piece! Hope to see more of Shoshana's excellent work here, as she's a big part of the reason I've become a proponent for occupational licensing reform.

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