Valuing Professional Licensing in the US

The Alliance for Responsible Professional Licensing commissioned Oxford Economics to produce a quantitative study to explore the impacts of professional licensing in highly complex, technical fields, such as engineers, surveyors, architects, landscape architects, and certified public accountants. Among our key findings: licensed workers’ wages are 10%-15% higher compared with unlicensed workers with similar levels of education, training and experience. And a license is found to narrow both the gender-driven and the race-driven wage gap.

What you will learn:

• Across all college-educated workers, a license is associated with gains in earnings of 20% and 8% for female and male workers, respectively.
• Licensed workers are 5% less likely to switch occupation, and 1% less likely to enter non-employment in the following month.
• Our analysis has pointed to the fact that highly skilled minority workers have greater returns from licensing than high-skill non-minorities.