Where Does Arkansas Rank In Occupational Licensing?

Dr. Dick Carpenter spoke to UCA students at the College of Business Auditorium in Conway on November 16 about how Arkansas’s occupational licensing laws compared to the rest of the nation.

Carpenter is a director of strategic research for the Institute for Justice (IJ), a nonprofit public interest law firm. He is the co-author of a new study by IJ entitled ,“License to Work: A National Study of Burdens From Occupational Licensing”, released on November 13 which finds Arkansas to be “one of the worst states in the nation when it comes to licensing lower-income occupations.” Arkansas is the third most broadly and onerously licensed state and has the sixth most burdensome licensing requirements, according to the study.

Carpenter recommends Arkansas can improve on this ranking by eliminating licensing for occupations that aren’t a risk to health and public safety, severely reducing some licensing requirements and implementing occupational regulations that are less-restrictive than traditional licensing.

Burdensome occupational licensing requirements makes it more difficult for workers to enter certain industries which leads to consumers bearing the cost of artificially-inflated prices, according to Carpenter.

Carpenter said:

“For a long time we’ve lived in a binary world of licensing or no licensing. There are many options in between that can achieve the same benefits of licensing without requiring a full license like mandatory bonding and insurance, registration, inspections and government certification. These are all forms of government interventions that aren’t licenses but can achieve some of the same benefits of licenses.

There’s no reason a cosmetologist needs to go to school for more than a year to earn a license. Those requirements could be dialed back if not eliminated entirely.

Given the ranking of Arkansas in our report, reform is most definitely needed to expand economic liberty on behalf of its citizens.”

Carpenter was introduced by State Rep. Jeff Williams of District 89. Both Carpenter and Williams answered questions from the audience after Carpenter’s speech concluded.

Williams said:

“The most important point at least for me out of this discussion is the understanding that much of these occupational licensing issues are driven by the industries themselves. They want these obstacles to decrease competition. In the United States, we want the ability of a free people to freely be able to do business that is legal in that state. Unfortunately, there is a lot of people that benefit financially from creating these obstacles.”

Carpenter’s talk was part of the ACRE Speaker Series at UCA, which brings experts from across the nation to visit with UCA students. Stephen Slivinski, a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of Economic Liberty at Arizona State University, will be the next Speaker Series guest on March 27. Slivinski will speak about the link between occupational licensing burdens and crime recidivism. You can watch Dr. Carpenter’s full talk by visiting our YouTube channel here.