This is the Cato Daily podcast for Friday, March 28, 2025.

I'm Caleb Brown.

More states are moving ahead with legalizing a variety of service providers whose only mistake

was getting licensed to perform those services in another state.

Ed Timmons of the Nee Regulatory Research Center describes what

that means in terms of employment and services provided to consumers. We spoke earlier this month

in Louisville, Kentucky. You do a lot of work on occupational licensing and have for a long time,

and I'd like to talk about two things.

One, in the states, there has been this move with regard to occupational licenses, which is a state

or sometimes local, permission slip from the government that allows you to ply your trade without fear of arrest

and imprisonment for doing so. And a lot of states have looked at the regimes that they have in

place and said, you know, it would be just fine if we allowed licensed people who practice

this profession in another state to come into our state, and the license is already granted

based upon the judgment of the people in that other state that issued the license.

So that's, some states have adopted this.

What have we seen recently?

Yeah, so today we have 26 states that have passed some version of the reform.

And just this past year, we saw three additional states past universal recognition.

So Louisiana, Nebraska, Florida, all past universal recognition. And there's three states right now

that are actively considering the reform as well.

You have Texas.

You also have West Virginia, my home state, and North Dakota, considering universal recognition.

...