Gatekeeping Benefits Gatekeepers
Occupational licensing bestows substantial benefits on existing practitioners in an occupation. Much prior research has documented how licensing restricts competition, allowing practitioners to charge more for their services. 1 A 2015 White House paper calling for licensing reform reported that licensing increases the costs of services by 3% to 16%, with specific estimates varying across time, place, and occupation. 2 More recent studies derive estimates in the same range. 3

Licensing also gives existing practitioners power that they can use to further restrict competition within their occupations and even from other occupations. 4 This is because practitioners often dominate licensing boards and other bodies with the power to create or enforce occupational regulations. 5 Licensing boards and other regulatory bodies with the power to regulate occupations are often able to create new barriers to entry or continued practice. In a phenomenon known as “license creep,” they may also be able to reinterpret their license’s scope of practice to encompass practices that were not contemplated at the time of their license’s creation. 6 In this way, licensing boards can sweep similar or related, but ultimately distinct, occupations into their domain. Licensing boards for a wide variety of occupations have attempted this, often successfully. 7 Cosmetology boards have been particularly zealous, with cosmetology license creep ensnaring occupations including African-style natural hair braiders, eyebrow threaders, eyelash extension specialists, and makeup artists. 8
These benefits help explain why existing practitioners are often behind campaigns for licensure. 9 Although the stated rationales for gatekeeping occupational entry are typically the desire to protect health and safety and the desire to “professionalize” occupations not traditionally considered high status, there is ample evidence that another motivation is the desire to reduce competition or, put more generously, to boost wages in traditionally lower-income occupations. 10 For example, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, barber unions pursued licensure—with great success—to restrict competition from “discount barbers” and graduates of barber colleges, then a new route into the occupation and an alternative to lengthy apprenticeships under union members. 11 The unions often framed this as being necessary to protect the public from unsanitary barbers, but research suggests they intentionally overstated the risks to achieve their goal—and that barbershop prices went up with licensure. 12