By: Michaela Galligan
The Institute for Justice, a non-profit public interest law firm operating in the United States, published Clean Cut: How Clipping Unnecessary Licensing Can Grow Opportunities for Barbers and Manicurists and Keep Customers Safe last year. It focuses on state-regulated mandates on licensing for those working in the hairstyling and nail health industry and their effect on the health and safety of salons for customers.
The study examined data from states like New York and Connecticut, for nail salon inspections, and Alabama and Mississippi, for barber shop inspections. New York and Mississippi have very strict licensing requirements for each field, while Connecticut and Alabama do not. This led Senior Research Analyst Matthew West, Ph.D, to hypothesize that “If manicurist and barber licenses bolster health and safety, then nail salons and barbershops in unlicensed or less onerously licensed states should exhibit worse inspection outcomes than counterparts who need to meet steeper state-imposed requirements.”
However, West’s research did not support their hypothesis. Nail salons and barber shops did well on health inspections regardless of mandated licensing requirements across states. The results suggest that these licensing requirements are forcing barbers and manicurists to get expensive and time-consuming licenses for maintaining health and safety standards that are achieved without them. Instead of mandated licenses, the study suggests that states mandate inspections for these businesses more frequently. This allows governments to protect the public without forcing business owners to pay exorbitant licensing fees.
The DeVoe L. Moore Center (DMC) at Florida State University is no stranger to research on the topic of how licensing negatively affects jobs and store owners. One study, Occupational Licensing in Florida: Unnecessary Licensing Kills Jobs, co-published with Reason Foundation in 2016, looked broadly at how licensing requirements hurt Florida job markets due to the hefty mandates around these fields. The policy brief calls on the state of Florida to review what careers require these occupational licenses. Reassessing these requirements would help the job market flourish and allow for many careers to become more accessible to the public.
Another study published in 2019 by The James Madison Institute (JMI), titled Bridging the Divide: Licensing and Recidivism, focuses on the effects of occupational licensing recidivism. Recidivism is the likelihood that former prisoners will reoffend and re-enter the prison system.
Co-authored with Vittorio Nastasi, Reason Foundation’s Director of Criminal Justice Policy, the study discusses Florida’s strict requirements on occupational licensing, many of which mandate years of study to meet course requirements and are often very expensive. Many of the careers that require these skills can pay well once the license is received, a factor in reducing recidivism. The issue is that since these licenses are difficult to obtain, former prisoners who want to join these career fields may not be able to due to the difficult process. This can cause a lack of job availability for past offenders, leading to rising recidivism rates.
The authors suggest that the requirement for many of these occupational licenses, especially those that other states do not require, should be reassessed to lower Florida’s recidivism rate.
A third study, A Completed Sentence, but Ongoing Sentence: How Past Criminal Convictions Bar Floridians from Occupational Licensing Opportunities, was published with the Florida Policy Institute and co-authored with FPI policy analyst Tachana Joseph-Marc. Though this study covers a similar research area as the previous study published with JMI, the FPI looks at the factors around occupational licensing that cause recidivism. Specifically, the reasons that past offenders are barred from pursuing occupational licenses in the first place. Florida has a requirement of “good moral character” to pursue most occupational licenses, which bars many who have served prison sentences. Staley and Joseph-Marc suggest how the Florida Legislature can approach reform in the area, learn from other states, and make suggestions for future research on how this study can be expanded.
The DMC is dedicated to research in areas such as this, using a market-based approach to policy research to make suggestions to elected officials on how to improve issues across the state of Florida. The Institute for Justice’s new study, DMC’s past work, provides an interesting and needed framework around the issue of occupational licensing and how states can improve the situation. The DMC is thrilled to highlight the Clean Cut study and future research.
Check out Clean Cut: How Clipping Unnecessary Licensing Can Grow Opportunities for Barbers and Manicurists and Keep Customers Safe to learn more!
This article is a product of the Editorial & Public Affairs in the DeVoe L. Moore Center under the supervision of DMC Director Dr. Samuel Staley and Editorial & Public Affairs Manager Chloe Offutt.
Edited by Mia Sweeney and Chloe Offutt
Michaela Galligan is a senior at Florida State University and is studying editing, writing, and media and political science with minors in communication and sociology. At the DeVoe L. Moore Center, she is serving on the Editorial & Public Affairs Team, editing research and creating content. She has published articles with FSView & Florida Flambeau, Her Campus at FSU, and the Political Review at Florida State University on various topics and completed research on political media and public policy.
