Licensing Requirements for Manicurists and Barbers

Both manicurists and barbers are currently licensed by all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Both are also often subject to onerous education and experience requirements, exams, fees, and other hurdles, though specifics vary widely. 1  Such variation calls into question the basis for and necessity of licensing mandates. 2 However, it also enables this study to examine whether less burdensome licensing—or, in the case of manicurists, none at all—compromises health and safety outcomes.

Although every state and the District of Columbia now license manicurists, for roughly 40 years, Connecticut did not. After a sunset review finding the state’s manicurist license “[could not] be justified in terms of public health and safety,” Connecticut eliminated the license in 1980, becoming the only state not to license the occupation. 3  It relicensed manicurists only in 2021. 4 Connecticut’s period without a manicurist license creates an opportunity to compare nail salon health inspection outcomes in an unlicensed state to those in a neighboring licensed state—a strong test of licensing’s efficacy. This study uses New York as a comparator because it had the best available data among the states that share a border with Connecticut. During the study period (and as of 2022), New York’s license required 250 hours of education, two exams, and $70 in fees, as well as a minimum age of 17 years old. 5

Like manicurists, it was only recently that barbers came to be licensed by every state and the District of Columbia. For more than three decades, from 1981 to 2014, Alabama did not license the occupation at the state level, though some counties maintained their own licensing systems. 6 And when the state reintroduced licensing, it did so only for full-service (“Class 2”) barbers and grandfathered in existing barbers. 7 Unfortunately, the presence of county-level licensing during the period of state-level delicensing, along with other data limitations, makes it impossible to compare barbershop health inspection outcomes in unlicensed Alabama to those in a licensed neighboring state. Instead, this study compares inspection outcomes in two neighboring states—Alabama and Mississippi—with disparate licensing requirements. During the study period, Alabama—like eight other states—required 1,000 hours of schooling, plus exams and fees, to become a licensed barber. 8 While steep, Alabama’s education mandate was on the lower end, with only four states requiring fewer hours during the study period. 9 Mississippi required 50% more education—1,500 hours—plus exams and fees, as did 23 other states and the District of Columbia. 10 This put Mississippi on the higher end of education mandates for barbers, with only seven states requiring more schooling during the study period. 11 Thus, Alabama and Mississippi represented the two most common education requirements, as well as both relatively low and high burdens. 12 Figure 1 illustrates how the education requirements for barbers in Alabama and Mississippi compared to those in the other 48 states and the District of Columbia in 2017.

Figure 1. Barber Education Requirements During Study Period

Hours requirements varied widely across states, but Alabama’s and Mississippi’s were the two most common

4 states 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 NY PA MI OH IA NE MS 23 other states and DC OR AK ND NC AL 8 other states ID NJ Required hours of education 0 NH

Note. Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, and South Dakota required experience on top of their education requirements.

Source: Carpenter, D. M., Knepper, L., Sweetland, K., & McDonald, J. (2017). License to work: A national study of burdens from occupational licensing (2nd ed.). Institute for Justice. https://ij.org/report/license-to-work-2/