DO BARBERS REALLY NEED A LICENSE?   Dick Carpenter and Lisa Knepper of the Institute for Justice discuss their jaw-dropping licensing report in the Wall Street Journal today.  Among their findings:  Cosmetologists need, on average, 10 times as many days to fulfill their educational and training requirements (372) than emergency medical technicians (33). In fact, 66 occupations face greater average licensing burdens than EMTs.  Carpenter and Knepper smartly ask:

Are all these regulatory barriers to entry really necessary to protect public safety or prevent consumers from shoddy work, as defenders of occupational licensure claim? Regulatory inconsistencies from state to state undermine this argument.

The vast majority of jobs we studied are done in one state or another by people without any government-issued license. Interior designers are licensed in just three states and the District of Columbia, for example, funeral attendants in only nine states, and shampooers in a mere five states. We know of no evidence that consumers in the remaining states demanded occupational licenses to protect them from an epidemic of dangerous shampooing.

And what are these unnecessary licensure laws doing for job growth? Time for a serious re-think.