Licensure refers (in the US) to the granting of a license, usually to work in a particular profession. Many professions require a license from the government (generally the state government) in order to ensure that the public will not be harmed by the incompetence of the practitioners. Nurses, lawyers, psychologists, and public accountants are four examples of professions that require licensure.

People become licensed through training and/or passing an exam. In many cases, an individual must complete certain steps, such as the completion of an educational degree in a particular area of study, before becoming elligible to attempt licensure. Individuals sometimes advertise their licensed status by appending an acronym to their name: Jane Doe, CPA.

Licensure may be perpetual or may need to be renewed periodically. It is very common for renewal to depend in part or whole upon evidence of continual learning--often termed in the US continuing education or earning continuing education units CEU .

Licenses are generally offered within jurisdictions which are usually a state or territory. This creates interesting problems. Jurisdictions may have wildly varying requirements for attempting or achieving a license. For some licensees, it is hard or impossible to move their practice to a new jurisdiction and obtain licensure in the new jurisdiction. And there are questions of jurisdiction: If a doctor provides medical advice over the Internet to an individual in another jurisdiction, is she practicing licensed medicine in her jurisdiction or unlicensed medicine in the patient's jurisdiction?

Restricing Entry

Milton Friedman (1979) notes that licensure is widely used to restrict entry, particularly for occupations like medicine that have many individual practitioners dealing with a large number of individual customers (see for example the American Medical Association). The justification given by lobbyists for licensure laws is always to protect the consumer, but the real motivation behind licensure is to limit the supply of specific kinds of labor in order to raise their wages.

In Rhode Island, barbers, cosmetologists, arborists, massage therapists, landscape architects, chauffeurs, and even boxers are licensed.

"It is hard to regard altruistic concern for their customers as the primary motive behind their determined efforts to get legal power to decide who may be a plumber" (Friedman 1979).

Examples of professions requiring licensure

• Naturopathic medicine
• Physiotherapy
• Acupuncture
• Emergency medical technician
• Paramedic
• Doctor
• Music therapy
• Professional Engineer

References

• Friedman, Milton & Rose (1979). Free to Choose. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-133481-1.
• http://www.dlt.ri.gov/lmi/jobseeker/license.htm