The Latest On Occupational Licensing Reform

The last several years have seen a push for occupational licensing deregulation, highlighted by a 2015 Supreme Court decision against a North Carolina dental licensing board and calls for deregulation from both the Obama and Trump administrations. So far, these efforts have yielded limited results, but one state has shown progress: Michigan. This article reviews the evidence supporting such deregulation, discusses the Michigan reforms, and offers recommendations for other states that want to adopt similar reforms.

S. David Young argues that occupational licensing results in the misallocation of labor and harms consumers.

America’s founders thought the right to earn a living was so basic and obvious that it didn’t need to be mentioned in the Bill of Rights. The Right to Earn a Living charts the history of this fundamental human right, from the constitutional system that was designed to protect it by limiting government’s powers, to the Civil War Amendments that expanded protection to all Americans, regardless of race.

The pandemic of COVID-19 has created a significant strain on the healthcare system in the United States. As the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to spread, these numbers are only expected to increase, and with that so does the potential to overwhelm the US healthcare system.American regulatory policy limits the country's healthcare capacity in a variety of ways. In response, states must consider a range of temporary measures to allow the supply of healthcare professionals to meet the sudden growing demand and provide adequate care to patients. The existing web of state occupational licensing laws creates rigidity in healthcare labor supply. In this brief we highlight actions states have taken to reform occupational licensing, and we produce a novel ranking of these interventions as guidance to policymakers.In this special edition policy brief, we highlight how occupational licensing creates a lack of flexibility in the market for healthcare professionals. We then analyze recent action taken by states to combat the crisis, and we offer a novel ranking of which interventions are likely to be most effective in adding healthcare staff capacity.

This Book speaks from the point of view of criminal justice reform and there are significant references to the impact on post incarcerated individuals of the existing framework of Occupational Licensing and how reform will assist in job creation.The proposed reforms come from a standpoint of job creation and improving entrepreneurial opportunities within California and beyond. This book is fact based with significant documentation and research and is a personal plea for reform to not only California legislators but those across the nation.