-Today, I'm delighted to welcome the governors
from both parties to discuss the best ways
to reform occupational-licensing laws.
In many states, workers must pay thousands of dollars
and complete months and years,
even, of training to enter fields
such as real estate, tourism, and many others.
Nationally, the average training for cosmetologists
is 11 times longer than the training
for emergency medical technicians.
And, sometimes, training costs $20,000
for a cosmetology license.
So it's a -- -Wait.
What?
Weirdly enough, in our research,
we found that this comparison comes up a lot
whenever there's a debate about occupational licensing.
The Institute for Justice says 1,500 hours is too much time.
For perspective, EMTs only need 154 hours of training.
-To become an emergency medical technician
takes 1/16 the number of hours in school
that it does to legally cut hair in the state.
-The implication is that there's too much job regulation
and that it's a government failure for cosmetologists
to be training longer than EMTs.
So, what's going on here?
Before we dive in, we have to understand
what occupational licensing even is.
-It's a right to practice.
So if you don't have permission from government to work,
you're fined or can go to jail.
-And this debate about how professions
are regulated spans decades.
In the Middle Ages, professional guilds decided
who could practice certain trades.
By the 1700s, economist and philosopher Adam Smith
argued against job regulations.
And in the 1950s, roughly 5% of U.
S. occupations required a license.
In 2016, it was 22%.
But there's no blanket licensing law.
It's all up to the states.
So, if you're an electrician, you have to get
a license in Alaska, but not Arizona.
When it comes to cosmetologists and EMTs,
there's a big discrepancy.
In D. C.
, cosmetologists have to complete
1,500 hours of training.
In Iowa, it's 2,100. To become an EMT,
most states require trainees to complete an improved course
comprised of at least 150 hours of training.
That means, on average, cosmetologists do train
10 times longer than EMTs.
But it's not that simple.
The comparison leaves out the traditional training
that EMTs usually complete after taking their exam
and the positioning of the two careers
within their respective fields.
But politicians, economists,
and researchers from across the political spectrum
say licensing laws have gone off the rails.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has chimed in on the debate.
-You have to get a license to do something like 400 hours
of training
in another state to move in to be able to braid hair.
-A lot of braiders are low income,
so if you have this program that is expensive,
I'm worried that folks who have learned this technique
from their family members are then being forced
to pay for expensive licensing and that sort of stuff.
So I'm worried about access.
-We've heard from some cosmetologists
and other folks who sort of say like,
"Look, the sanitation side of this is really important,
and the scalp-care side of this is really important."
-But a lot of that is common sense, right?
Don't pull too tightly, keep your tools clean.
And even for, like, the learning aspect,
cosmetology schools aren't teaching a lot about --
anything about African-American hair.
-Critics of licensing have echoed Destinee's wariness
of the cost of cosmetology school.
The median salary for a cosmetologist
in the United States is around $25,000.
For-profit beauty schools can charge, on average, $17,000.
But licensed cosmetologists argue that the training
is necessary for quality and safety.
-And I know, nationally, there is a lot of states
that are looking at just doing away
with licenses completely,
which, to us, would be a huge public hazard.
-Wait.
Why? Help me understand.
-Well, because if someone was -- If you came in to get --
Like, let's say you wanted your hair blond and,
from scalp to ends, all blond.
Someone that didn't know what they were doing
with the chemicals to put on your head
could burn you severely, cause your hair to fall out,
and really damage or hurt you
if they don't know what they're doing.
So to allow anyone those tools to be able to do that stuff,
you know, is dangerous.
We read through the comments
and sort of what led to this discussion.
And the interesting part about, to me,
what was said is that like, sure, an EMT --
150 to 200 hours,
but then it talked about practical training after that.
Our students are doing that all in one place.
You know what I mean?
So the comparison, for us, wasn't exactly the same.
-In the medical world, being an EMT
is an entry-level position,
and so some argue that paramedics,
which are a rung higher on the medical totem pole,
make for a more apt comparison to a cosmetologist.
For example, in Maryland,
cosmetologists must complete 1,500 hours of training
or apprentice for two years.
Paramedics have to be an EMT for at least 12 months
and finish 1,100 more hours of training.
And EMT schools and employers have different requirements.
Dr. Dasia
Merriweather runs a workforce-development school
that caters to students with barriers to employment.
When employers of their graduates
started to notice the newly trained
EMTs weren't able to perform certain tasks,
the school increased their training hours.
-With us being a workforce-development school,
we get a majority of residents in the District of Columbia
that come to us with many, many, many barriers.
And so along with training to be an EMT,
we have to also train a person
how to do career and job readiness.
And when you speak about, "Is there enough hours?"
, each program is unique.
-Politicians from both sides of the aisle
are interested in reform,
but there's no consensus on how to make that happen.
Part of the challenge is that there's not enough research
to say how licensing laws protect the public.
-It's certainly not a black-and-white issue.
Certainly, consumers and the public needs to be protected.
-Is there evidence that they did protect consumers
or have protected consumers?
-I think there's some evidence, but it's very mixed.
There's some evidence that, for example,
the licensing of midwives in the early 1900s
helped reduce infant and mothers's mortality rates.
But that's one of the few studies
that have been fairly conclusive
that regulations improved overall quality.
-Can you help me understand why we still have them then?
-A lot of people are licensed -- over 22% of the U.
S. workforce.
If you are licensed, you can raise your own wages
as much as 15% to 20%
over the course of your lifetime.
So that's a huge benefit to those people.
-In my mind, I want my EMT to be, like, really licensed.
I want them to know everything.
-You may not want your EMT to be licensed.
You may want that person to have lots of training
and be knowledgeable about your condition.
-Right. -And that's very different.
-Politicians may agree that occupational-licensing laws
need to be updated,
but by comparing two very different professions,
they're missing the point.
Each industry has its own unique challenges
and responsibilities to the public.