Remote Work Disrupts State Occupational Licensing: The $1.6 Trillion Regulatory Federalism Challenge
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: States regulate professional services using occupational licensing regimes instituted pre-1900 when services were completely internal commerce of states. Now, services flow digitally across state lines along national internet infrastructure, raising new Constitutional questions of state versus federal regulatory jurisdiction. Using state administrative data and occupational digitizability indicators, we estimate that a mean across the fifty states of 35 percent of state-occupationally-licensed workers can remotely deliver their services with value totaling $1.6 trillion in 2024. This threatens state policy-maker jurisdiction over occupational regulation and spotlights the digital era federalism conflict between state sovereignty and national regulatory coherence in an increasingly de-spatialized economy.
Authors: Adrienne Edisis, Aditya Sai Phutane
Institution: Virginia Tech
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4416851015