US: New research shows fewer new professions being licensed
The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis reports that while roughly 22 percent of employed Americans now hold a government-issued occupational license — in fields ranging from cosmetology to teaching and physical therapy — recent data show that the rapid growth in licensure and number of licensed occupations has recently stabilized. After decades of expansion (from an estimated 5 percent of the workforce in the 1950s), the share of licensed workers has hovered around 22 percent since about 2016. The slowdown reflects fewer new occupations being licensed, though once an occupation is licensed by a state, it almost never reverts — “delicensure” is extremely rare. The data underlying this analysis come from an expanded “Occupational Licensing Dashboard,” which now tracks both licensing policy across states and survey-based information on licensed workers, helping inform policymakers weighing licensure decisions.