Compare States

How does your state compare to others when it comes to licensing specific occupations among the 102 lower-income ones studied in License to Work? Use this tool to identify occupations your state licenses that others don’t, as well as occupations for which your state imposes overly steep licensing requirements. Such licenses, particularly those involving excessive education and experience mandates and needless high school graduation requirements, may be ripe for reform.

Step 1

Using the dropdown menu, choose the occupation for which you wish to compare licensing requirements.

Step 2

Using the map or the dropdown menu, choose the states whose licensing requirements you wish to compare.

Data Notes: 2022 data collected between February 3, 2020, and March 18, 2022. Fees include charges for application review and license issuance; exams; background checks, credit reports and fingerprinting; recovery fund contributions; third-party certification; and certain fees for training courses. Calendar days lost were estimated based on required education and experience; except for amounts smaller than one day, days lost are rounded to whole days and thus may not reflect very small changes between 2017 and 2022. Appendix A details methods for estimating days lost and calculating burden ranks. Complete data, including revised 2017 data, are available at https://ij.org/report/license-to-work-3/ltw3-data/.

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