For every licensed occupation, each state has its own list of requirements a potential applicant must meet before qualifying for a license. These can range from required education and hours of experience to a minimum age. You'll even find less common requirements, like demonstrating "good moral character." Right off the bat, that's a lot to track, especially across 50 states and D.C. One-way states can help applicants by making this information as accessible as possible.
The Knee Regulatory Research Center's occupational licensing snapshot is entering its third year, and one concern that keeps coming across professions is transparency. Gathering regulatory data for the Knee Center's licensing database already means learning the ins and outs of a profession, its terminology, its required education or certifications, and everything in between. Transparency can either ease or complicate that process as we update existing professions and add new ones each year. If licensing information is hidden well enough that you start to wonder whether the license even exists, how is someone hoping to work in that field supposed to apply for one?
A few states do a good job of presenting most or all this information. Pennsylvania currently has one of the most transparent licensing resources: on its professional licensing page under the Department of State, it lists one-sheet snapshots covering degree requirements, exams, experience, renewal, reciprocity, and initial fees. That level of detail is a major help both to us as analysts and to anyone applying for a license.
Michigan and South Carolina also do well. Both list licensed professions along with guides, checklists, and webpages covering key requirements. South Carolina and Michigan also link directly to the relevant laws, administrative codes, and occupational codes. That's valuable even when their webpages or checklists don't list as many requirements as Pennsylvania's; the linked statutes often contain that information anyway.
New York and Wisconsin are two more states with useful resources. Both post requirements and fee schedules are directly on their websites. Fee schedules matter because not every state discloses initial or renewal fees; Colorado and Delaware, for instance, don't list renewal fees on their profession pages. Some states bury fees behind an online application that requires creating an account just to see the cost.
Transparency remains an ongoing concern for us at the Knee Center. Easy access to information matters both for our work building and updating the licensing database and for anyone applying for a license in their state. Even so, some state boards get this right, providing information upfront that's accessible to us, to professionals, and to the public. We hope more states follow their lead and adopt similar features going forward.
Ethan Kelley is a Legislative Analyst at the Knee Regulatory Research Center and a predoctoral scholar at West Virginia University.