MINNEAPOLIS — IN Minnesota, more classroom time is required to become a cosmetologist than to become a lawyer. Becoming a manicurist takes double the number of hours of instruction as a paramedic. In Louisiana, the only state in the country that requires licenses for florists, monks were until recently forbidden to sell coffins because they were not licensed funeral directors.

These regulations are not just unusual cases of state laws run amok but deliberate policies from one of the fastest growing labor market institutions in the United States: government licensing of jobs. This form of regulation — largely established by state governments and implemented through their licensing boards — is often referred to as “the right to practice.” Under these laws, working in a licensed occupation is illegal without first meeting government standards.

In the 1970s, about 10 percent of individuals who worked had to have licenses, but by 2008, almost 30 percent of the work force needed them.

With this explosion of licensing laws has come a national patchwork of stealth regulation that has, among other things, restricted labor markets, innovation and worker mobility. There is a role for government in protecting the public from incompetent or unscrupulous service providers, but there is little reason for math teachers to be relicensed every time they move from one state to another. These requirements put additional burdens on teachers that reduce the ability of good teachers to find work and schools to find good teachers.