26. Is Professional Licensing a Racket?

Licensing began with medicine and law; now it extends to 20 percent of the U.S. workforce, including hair stylists and auctioneers. In a new book, the legal scholar Rebecca Allensworth calls licensing boards “a thicket of self-dealing and ineptitude” and says they keep bad workers in their jobs and good ones out — while failing to protect the public.

SOURCES:Rebecca Allensworth • , professor of law at Vanderbilt University.

RESOURCES: • " The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong • " by Rebecca Allensworth (2025). • " Licensed to Pill, • " by Rebecca Allensworth (The New York Review of Books, • 2020). • " Licensing Occupations: Ensuring Quality or Restricting Competition? • " by Morris Kleiner (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, • 2006). • " How Much of Barrier to Entry is Occupational Licensing? • " by Peter Blair and Bobby Chung (British Journal of Industrial Relations, • 2019).

EXTRAS: • " Is Ozempic as Magical as It Sounds? • " by Freakonomics Radio • (2024).