New Laws Ease Georgia’s Occupational Licensing Burden

Restrictive licensing practices and regulatory barriers frequently prevent qualified and trained workers from participating in the workforce. This is true in Georgia as elsewhere, but a few bills passed in this year’s legislative session took aim at those barriers.

A license is essentially the government’s permission to work, and in any state concerned with growth, prosperity and freedom, it should be one of the last regulatory tools considered. The burden should fall on the government to demonstrate that a restriction addresses a genuine danger and that a less restrictive alternative is not plausibly available.

Senate Bill 553, sponsored by Senator Bo Hatchett, reorganizes the state’s construction-industry licensing system and establishes clearer paths to licensure for electricians, plumbers, conditioned-air contractors, low-voltage contractors and utility contractors. Among other provisions, it recognizes technical education and federally approved apprenticeships as qualifying routes for certain applicants and preserves avenues for reciprocity. This is particularly important now, as Georgia contractors report persistent difficulty in finding qualified craft workers, particularly as continued construction and infrastructure investment increases demand for skilled trades. 

Senate Bill 207, sponsored by Senator Brian Strickland, addresses uncertainty for Georgians with criminal records. Under the new law, a person may ask a licensing authority for a predetermination of eligibility before completing the education, training or other requirements he or she must meet to obtain a license. If the authority plans to deny the application because of a criminal record, the applicant is entitled to an explanation and an opportunity for a hearing. The law also requires agencies to report data on applications, approvals and denials.

Public safety may justify excluding someone from a particular occupation in some circumstances. However, when a sentence is served and an offense bears little or no relationship to the occupation, it should not prevent an otherwise qualified person from earning a living in that field. 

House Bill 1254, sponsored by Representative Matt Reeves, takes another step by consolidating or transferring several smaller licensing functions to the Secretary of State. While administrative consolidation might not be the first thing that comes to mind in debates over how to unleash economic potential, fragmented boards and slow approval processes still impose costs. The law dissolves boards overseeing several jobs and places their licensing functions within a single office while preserving industry expertise through advisory groups where appropriate. By allowing the Secretary of State’s office to process applications and routine decisions directly, the consolidation can reduce the need to wait for separate boards to meet and act.

Georgia still has plenty of room to improve. For example, the Archbridge Institute’s 2025 State Occupational Licensing Index ranks Georgia near the middle of the states for its overall licensing burden. The state imposes 117 occupational licenses, which is fewer than the national average, but restricts work through 158 licensing barriers, roughly matching the national average. While this diagnosis isn’t horribly bleak, it hardly befits the “best state for business,” label that Georgia lawmakers seek to maintain.

Very few people object to meaningful standards for professions in which incompetence or a lack of qualifications could cause harm, physical, financial or otherwise. Problems arise and compound, though, when licensing barriers are erected in response to every conceivable concern and then exist perpetually without scrutiny as to the costs they impose.

This year’s legislation follows previous reforms, including a 2023 law that streamlined licensing by endorsement for workers moving to Georgia. House Bill 579, sponsored by Representative Matt Reeves and enacted last year, allowed staff to administratively approve qualified applications rather than waiting for a full licensing-board vote, authorized temporary licenses and extended grace periods for expired credentials. The Secretary of State’s office also reports that its new online licensing platform reduced average nursing-license processing time from 48 days to 18 days.

Lawmakers should continue to question which licenses remain necessary, whether education and experience requirements match the risks involved and whether Georgia’s rules are substantially more burdensome than those of neighboring states. Georgia should keep moving in the right direction: maintaining professional standards while removing unnecessary barriers to honest work.