The Washington, D.C.–based Archbridge Institute just released its rating of occupational licensing burdens in each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., and Missouri came out looking very good.
That institute’s 2026 State Occupational Licensing Index tracks two things across over 200 different professions: whether or not a state requires licensing and, if it does, how onerous it is to get one. Missouri received a perfect score of 0.00, (ranking 51st of 51) meaning Missouri has fewer barriers than other states. This is a good thing.
Occupational licensing is something Show-Me Institute analysts have covered for a long time. My colleague Avery Frank described occupational licensing as “the government giving someone permission to work in a certain field. Obtaining a license typically involves satisfying an educational requirement and paying a fee.”
While often cast as public safety measures, Frank notes that a study conducted by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that in “only 16% of included studies did researchers observe positive relationships between licensing and product quality.”
What licensing does is raise prices, create barriers for entrepreneurs, and reduce innovation. Licensing is often overseen by professional organizations whose main aim is to make it more difficult for would-be competition to, well, compete.
In coming last—the lightest barrier in the country—Missouri just narrowly beat out Kansas, which earned the second-lowest (best) rating. The report credits this directly to Missouri’s 2018 universal recognition law, which lets a worker licensed in good standing in another state transfer that license here. A 2020 law greatly improved the effort.
There is always room for improvement, of course. Archbridge notes that Missouri still has about 120 licensing barriers on the books. And Frank has pointed out that even under the 2020 reform, waivers can take up to six months to award. Frank also notes that sunset provisions—requiring licenses to periodically justify their existence or expire—would help reveal other outdated requirements the way past scrutiny already did for licenses like hair braiding.
Nevertheless, a win is a win, and Missouri is doing well on occupational licensing.
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