Posts tagged occupational licensing
Millions of men missing from US labor force
February 17, 2025 // Roughly 7 million American men are missing from the U.S. labor force. Vice President of General Economics and Trade at the Cato Institute Scott Lincicome says the trend started in the 1960s, but the vast majority of the men who aren’t working are unemployed for reasons other than labor market issues. However, the economy still needs workers.
Independent Work Offers Hope for Financial Security for Women 50+
March 5, 2024 // “I have friends who are struggling in retirement because they lost good jobs at age 50 and could never find another career position despite years of job searching.” A 2017 field study bears this out. Conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the study revealed a 47% lower callback rate for older female applicants than young female applicants aged 29 to 31 years. For sales jobs, the callback rate was 36% lower for older female applicants. Because independent contracting is vital to keeping pre-retirement women attached to the workforce, it defies logic that legislators insist on stifling the very independent career opportunities that help these women supplement their income, stay active, and maintain a sense of purpose.
Opinion: Liberate markets to help workers succeed
January 10, 2023 // From educational services and child care to transportation, housing, and health care, the Cato team offers sensible reforms that either eliminate barriers to opportunity or make it easier for individuals to spend public dollars in the way most likely to meet their particular needs. As Lincicome observes in the book’s conclusion, our political debate is filled with supposedly “pro-worker” proposals that are based on faulty assumptions about the past, present, and future of the American workplace. Far too many politicians think of workers as “helpless and in need of government protection from cradle to grave, despite the long‐term harms that such policies inflict on these very same workers and the economy more broadly,” he writes. “By contrast, pro‐market policies that respect the individual agency and ability of all workers would allow them to pursue their unique hopes and dreams in a more dynamic, diverse, and high‐wage economy—and to adjust to whatever comes next.”