The ARPL-Oxford report comes as licensing reform
is emerging as a hot topic of debate in statehouses across America in
2021. The Valuing Professional Licensing report delivers a red flag to
lawmakers and policy setters who are considering applying
one-size-fits-all legislation in an attempt to roll back their state
licensing programs. In 2020, several states attempted to pass bills that
would eliminate licensure for various occupations and professions as a
way to ease occupational mobility challenges caused by the pandemic or
generate economic growth.
Many of these legislative efforts cite
prior research on occupational licensing, which revealed only
surface-level findings and relied on pooling data for all licensed
professions and occupations to arrive at overgeneralized conclusions
about the monetary and societal impacts of licensing across all
professions and occupations. This study provides a deeper dive into the
data to uncover nuanced findings about the effects of licensing on
different types of professions and occupations.
Key findings of the Oxford research include:
- Across
all professions and occupations, licensing is associated with a 6.5%
average increase in hourly earnings, even after accounting for the job
holder’s educational attainment, gender, and racial demographics.
- Among
professionals in technical fields requiring significant education and
training, a license narrows the gender-driven wage gap by about one
third and the race-driven wage gap by about half.
- Minority
engineers, surveyors, architects, landscape architects, and CPAs can
expect an 8.1% hourly wage increase on average after becoming licensed
in their field.
- Female engineers, surveyors, architects,
landscape architects, and CPAs can expect a 6.1% hourly wage increase on
average after becoming licensed in their field.
- Both white
professionals and male professionals were shown to benefit from
licensing too, but to a lesser degree. White engineers, surveyors,
architects, landscape architects, and CPAs can expect a 2.9% hourly wage
increase after becoming licensed; and males in these professions can
expect a 0.7% hourly wage increase after becoming licensed.
- Those
in trade and vocational occupations (e.g., barber, plumber, etc.) can
expect a 7.1% hourly wage increase after becoming licensed, while those
in a profession requiring advanced education and training (e.g.,
engineer, architect, etc.) can expect a 3.6% wage increase after
becoming licensed.
These key findings, among others in the
report, highlight how policymakers have a responsibility to acknowledge
the inherent differences of licensing on various professions and
occupations and to develop narrowly tailored policy solutions to solve
occupation-specific licensing challenges. Broad-brush, one-size-fits-all
policy doesn’t work, but responsible licensing does.
Alliance for Responsible Professional Licensing
(ARPL) is a coalition composed of national associations that represent
highly complex, technical professions and their state licensing boards.
Members of ARPL are licensed in all 50+ U.S. states and territories.
Associations within ARPL have established uniform education,
examination, and experience standards and a proven national mobility
path for professionals.
Members of ARPL include the American
Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), American Society of
Civil Engineers (ASCE), the American Society of Landscape Architects
(ASLA), the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards
(CLARB), National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA),
National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB), National
Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), and National Council of
Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES).