Enhancing State Efforts to Remove Licensure Barriers for Veterans and Military Spouses
The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices has partnered with the National Conference of State Legislatures and the Council of State Governments on a three-year project entitled Occupational Licensing: Assessing State Policy and Practice. This project, funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, is focused on ensuring that occupational licensing requirements don’t create unnecessary barriers to labor market entry and improving the portability of licenses across state lines. The project places special focus on populations, including veterans and military spouses, that may face disproportionately high barriers to obtaining occupational licenses that are required to work in some occupations. The partners recently released a series of four publications that focus on unique population-specific challenges and outline specific state policy options to address them.
The publication, titled Improving Access to Licensed Occupations for Veterans and Military Families, outlines the broad policy barriers facing veterans and military spouses, the subsequent employment and education impacts and the resulting state efforts to remove these barriers. Despite being well-prepared for civilian employment, veterans report that finding a job is the top challenge they face as they transition into civilian life. To ease this transition, all 50 states and Puerto Rico have enacted legislation to assist veterans in obtaining occupational licenses, many in the past five years. Some policy options states are employing to ease licensing barriers for veterans include processes for licensure boards to recognize equivalent military education, experience and training towards licensure requirements. In other cases, where there are gaps between military and civilian occupational training, states are providing opportunities for veterans to access educational bridge programs specially designed to fill in the gaps in training, without requiring veterans to repeat or duplicate education or training they received while serving. Several states have also enacted legislation to allow for waiver of education requirements to sit for licensure exams and for expedited application review of veteran applicants.
Research shows that military spouses are diverse, entrepreneurial, adaptable, educated, team-oriented and civically engaged. Eighty-four percent have some college education or higher, 25 percent have a bachelor’s degree and 10 percent have an advanced degree. Despite being highly educated, nearly one-third of military spouses are underemployed and roughly 38 percent earn less than their civilian counterparts. All 50 states have enacted legislation to make their licensure environment more accessible to military spouses. These policy changes include temporary licensure provisions, expedited application review, and fee waivers. Another targeted approach is licensure by endorsement, a process whereby a board issues a permanent license without further examination to applicants who hold a valid license in another jurisdiction with similar standards. Military spouses can be licensed by endorsement if a state board or licensing body determines equivalency between that state’s standards for issuing a license and the education and testing required to obtain a license in the spouse’s previous state. Generally, this can lengthen the licensing process by requiring military spouses to submit documentation showing academic course work, test scores and practicum hours, along with licenses held in all previous states and a record of employment.
While all states have demonstrated a commitment to easing licensure barriers or reducing time to licensure for veterans and military spouses, a recent joint report by the Departments of Defense (DoD) and Homeland Security (DHS) identifies opportunities for states to continue to refine their approaches to ensure the desired outcomes for these groups. This report, a result of six years of consultations between DoD, DHS and the states, provides a review of the variable impact of these state strategies and provides recommendations to optimize the benefits intended by recent changes in states laws and regulations. Further, the report recommends that state officials encourage their licensure boards to participate in efforts to establish interstate compacts that are being considered by the national associations of state boards and national associations of professionals for their occupations. Interstate compacts are immutable contracts between states which, when codified in state law, can eliminate the need for measuring equivalency by developing a common understanding of competency. Through compacts, states can consider new approaches to multi-state licensing and interstate license oversight.
The DoD/DHS report recommendations and our project work highlight the importance of mitigating licensure barriers for veterans and military spouses, the significant efforts states are making to alleviate barriers and additional opportunities for improvements. The National Governors Association and our partners will continue to work with states to examine current licensure practices and identify policy changes that can improve outcomes for veterans and military spouses. State policymakers can access additional DoD resources on service members and military families through the Defense-State Liaison Office.
Amanda Winters is a Senior Policy Analyst in the Economic Opportunity Division of National Governors Association’s Center for Best Practices.
