Minnesota hair and makeup artist Cristina Ziemer helps clients look their best at weddings, proms and other special events. She does honest work for honest pay, but state regulators decided her onsite services were illegal in 2018.
The problem was not customer complaints. Ziemer had solid reviews. Instead, trouble started when the Minnesota Board of Cosmetology reinterpreted the scope of its authority to include hair and makeup artists working for themselves outside salons. Freelancers suddenly needed an occupational license to stay in business, and Ziemer could not afford the expense.
Rather than shut down, she went underground. She stopped promoting herself on social media, stopped optimizing her website to keep it off Google, and stopped answering online inquiries from strangers — who could be undercover agents posing as clients.
The hunt for lipstick outlaws ended in 2020 when Minnesota lawmakers clarified the rules, explicitly removing licensing requirements for hair and makeup artists. Now, instead of spending months in beauty school and paying thousands of dollars in tuition, professionals like Ziemer need only complete a four-hour course on health, safety and infection control.
The reform has made life easier for hundreds of Minnesota beauty professionals, yet onerous restrictions remain in other jurisdictions. Freelance makeup artist Raven Dybedahl, who lives a few miles across the state line in Fargo, N.D., graduated from a makeup program and later paid more than $8,000 for esthetician school. Yet, North Dakota requires additional training before anyone can provide hair and makeup services at special events.
“I feel like I’m on the black market to do a job that I love,” Dybedahl told state lawmakers in 2021.
Millions of workers in dozens of industries face a similar patchwork of laws nationwide. “License to Work,” a new report from the public interest law firm Institute for Justice, examines 102 lower-income occupations and finds little continuity in licensing rules. Instead of uniform requirements based on rational concerns about health and safety, regulators enforce arbitrary rules that vary widely from state to state.
Some states demand occupational licenses that exist nowhere else. Only Louisiana licenses florists. Only Connecticut licenses forest workers. And only Ohio licenses social and human service assistants. Instead of worrying about their outlier status, many states double down with especially onerous licensing requirements.
Commercial carpenter contractors need 1,460 hours of education and experience in Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada and Oregon. But the same workers need zero hours of education and experience to obtain a license in 11 states and Washington, D.C., while 26 other states require no license — though some municipalities do. Cement finishing, drywall installation and other specialty contractors also encounter huge differences in licensing requirements, depending on where they live.
The rules are similarly random for interior designers. Florida stopped licensing the occupation in 2020, leaving only Nevada, Louisiana and Washington, D.C., with mandates in place. Across these three jurisdictions, interior designers need an average of six years to complete government requirements. Everywhere else, interior designers can start earning paychecks immediately.
Industry associations and policymakers often argue that occupational licensing is necessary to protect consumers, but the lack of uniformity across jurisdictions exposes the lie. If licensing tree trimmers were truly necessary in Maryland, for example, then it would be equally necessary for Virginia. Trees are the same on both sides of the Potomac River, yet the licensing requirements differ.
States further expose the lie when they reduce or cancel licensing burdens without ill effects. Utah eliminated a two-year experience requirement and all exam requirements for 33 specialty contractor licenses in 2017. Since then, state officials have seen no downsides.
When independent government reports look objectively at proposed regulations, they decline to recommend occupational licensing about 80 percent of the time, usually because evidence indicates no credible health or safety threats — or less burdensome ways to protect consumers. Policymakers should remember this.
Licensing is often not the best answer, and it brings its own costs. These include onerous barriers to work, reduced competition and higher consumer prices.
People deserve a chance to work in their chosen occupations without excessive government interference. Lawmakers can help aspiring workers and small businesses climb the economic ladder by untangling licensing red tape.
