Why Licensing Has Little Impact on Health and Safety

When Alabama relicensed barbers and Connecticut relicensed manicurists, the expressed motivation was to protect public health and safety. The Alabama state legislator who introduced the bill to relicense barbers described barbers as operating “without any accountability” and stressed a “duty to make those services safe and sanitary with the highest level of care.” ¹ Similarly, one sponsor of the legislation to relicense manicurists in Connecticut said, “Through licensing . . . we would surely increase the health and safety quality of salons across our state.” ²

Anecdotes and speculation about alleged harms abounded. Absent were hard data. Proponents of relicensure failed to present any empirical evidence of supposed harms—nor of how licensing would address them. ³  The likely reason for this lapse is that such evidence does not exist. Indeed, the claim that licensing and licensing burdens ensure safe and sanitary service is at odds with empirical evidence. Instead, this study, as well as others, suggests the assumed impact of licensing and licensing burdens on health and safety is often overrated. ⁴ But why might this be? As it happens, there are several possible, and complementary, explanations for why licensing appears to have little impact on health and safety.

First, it is possible that ordinary market competition, along with the promise of health inspections, is sufficient to motivate safe, sanitary service in barbershops and nail salons. As I discuss in greater detail in the next section, the need to compete for customers gives businesses every incentive to work cleanly and safely. Visits from the health inspector give barbershops and nail salons additional reason to stay on their toes.

Second, licensing is not narrowly targeted to health and safety. Much of aspiring barbers’ and manicurists’ time in mandatory schooling is spent learning hair or nail techniques and business practices—things consumers can, and do, judge for themselves. Comparatively little time is spent on topics related to keeping consumers healthy and safe. A 2021 study found that, on average, only about 26% of barber (or cosmetologist) curricula and 40% of manicurist curricula teach about health and safety. ⁵  This is not to say that curricula spend too little time on health and safety (Nebraska, for example, requires about 600 hours ⁶ ), but rather to point out that state-mandated barber and beauty education is mostly about other matters.

Moreover, many of the practices barbers and manicurists must follow to keep customers safe are relatively simple.  For example, they should wash their hands frequently; they should clean and disinfect their tools between customers; and they should read the labels of chemical products and follow the instructions for use. ⁷  A lot of this is common sense. Not only that, but there are inexpensive courses that teach the basics in very little time. ⁸ And after all, my findings show that nail salons and barbershops in different jurisdictions have little trouble complying with health and safety regulations.

Third, licensing shuts aspiring workers out of occupations for reasons that have nothing to do with safe practice, like whether they are willing and able to complete an expensive and time-consuming barber or beauty school program. ⁹  And it does so regardless of their knowledge, their skills, and, perhaps most importantly, their conscientiousness, to say nothing of the existence of alternative, more affordable ways to learn. Having the disposable income, or the ability to qualify for student loans with which to pay for school, does not mean a person will be more motivated to adhere to health and safety rules when later employed at a barbershop or nail salon, and neither does having the English language proficiency needed to complete school, to name but two possible obstacles that can thwart aspirants. If a person is not conscientious, a license is not going to make them conscientious. On top of that, skilled or conscientious workers may decide the opportunity costs of fulfilling licensing requirements are too steep and choose other occupations instead. ¹⁰ Thus, licensing may exclude aspiring workers willing and able to provide safe, high-quality service as much as it includes them.

Finally, licensing may just be a fundamentally misguided approach. Licensing is premised, in part, on the notion that health and safety risks can be mitigated by policing who can enter an occupation. But regardless of who provides them, beauty and personal care services like manicuring and barbering are going to involve potentially risky things like using toxic chemicals or sharp objects on or around people. Whether workers are licensed or unlicensed, accidents can happen. In her testimony opposing relicensure of manicurists in Connecticut, one salon owner neatly summed up the problem:

Given the nature of the risks involved, it just does not make sense to rely on barriers to occupational entry to protect the public. Fortunately, there are other ways to mitigate risks that are more targeted to health and safety and the actual practice of these occupations than licensing—and that do not come with licensing’s costs.