This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, October 1st, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown. Occupational licensing continues to provide hurdles to success for so many Americans.

What states are leaders in reform?

At least one federal agency is now pondering, facilitating

reciprocity among states.

Is there any reason to expect that to lead to less licensing of American workers.

Lima Graf is Senior Legislative Council at the Institute for Justice.

We spoke recently in Louisville, Kentucky.

In recent decades, people who were required to have a license to do a job has gone from 5% to 25%.

That's 1 in 20 to 1 in four. And this has all sorts of implications for the

economy. It has a lot of implications for criminal justice and we might get into

some of those.

But as it stands right now, are there states that are waking up to the fact that their economies

could be fairly dramatically improved in substantial ways if they were to adopt a

deep digging heavy lift of looking at occupational licensing pretty much across the board.

States across the country have recognized that occupational licensing is the biggest

labor market institution in their states.

You hear lots of debate about the minimum wage or right to work in unionism, but only about 2% of workers earn the minimum wage and now only about 11% of workers

are members of unions. The big labor market institution is occupational licensing and it is a

costly and I would argue ineffective way of protecting consumers and so you have a large and

expensive and counterproductive institution making it more difficult for people to work and consumers to choose

the suppliers that they want. Are there any states that are looking at this in a

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