Professional licenses / credentials

Companies will often pay for your certification because certifications will ultimately help your job performance. Below is a list of certifications, broken down by career fields. Along with this list is the cost of the certification. Getting certified in your career field allows you the opportunity to demonstrate competence, credibility, experience and dedication in your field.

Take advantage of the opportunity to get certified today. Sandra is a marketing professional and founder of Corporate Minority. With an understanding that one's education can only take them so far, she founded the Corporate Minority to help young professionals beginning and striving to advance in their career. She doesn't claim to know it all but she hopes that through this platform others can also share the keys to success.

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As a result, researchers and others have developed an interest in using government surveys to measure the prevalence of certifications and licenses and tying these credentials to labor market outcomes and earnings.

This article provides an in-depth analysis of CPS data on professional certifications and licenses for As mentioned previously, in the CPS, certifications and licenses are credentials that demonstrate a level of skill or knowledge needed to perform a specific type of job. Both terms refer to time-limited credentials that need to be renewed periodically. The fundamental difference between the two is the issuer of the credential: certifications are issued by nongovernmental certification bodies, whereas licenses are awarded by a federal, state, or local government agency.

Thus, licenses convey a legal authority to work in an occupation, while a certification on its own does not. Do you have a currently active professional certification or a state or industry license? Do not include business licenses, such as a liquor license or a vending license. This question is used to identify people with a certification or license. People may have more than one of these credentials. Were any of your certifications or licenses issued by the federal, state, or local government?

People with a license may also have a certification. Earlier you told me you had a currently active professional certification or license. Was your certification or license required for your job? In , Among the employed, Licenses were the more common credential— See table 1. Finally, Among those with a license, In , people with a currently active certification or license participated in the labor force at a higher rate and had a lower unemployment rate than people without one of these credentials.

The labor force participation rate—the proportion of the civilian noninstitutional population working or looking for work—for those with a certification or license was The unemployment rate—the number of people actively looking and available for work as a percentage of the labor force—for people with one of these credentials, at 2. These results generally held for people in all age, sex, race, ethnicity, and educational attainment groups.

See table 2. Labor force participation rates typically vary by demographic characteristics such as age, sex, race, ethnicity, and educational attainment. However, the size of these participation rate gaps depends on certification and licensing status. Among those with a certification or license, differences in labor force participation between demographic groups tended to be smaller compared with those without one of these credentials.

For example, among those with a certification or license in , the participation rate for people ages 25 to 54 often referred to as the prime working age , at Among those without a certification or license, the prime-working-age participation rate, at The labor force participation rate gap between men and women was also smaller among those with one of these credentials.

Among those with a certification or license, the participation rate for men This pattern was perhaps most striking for educational attainment. For those with no certification or license, labor force participation increased steadily with educational attainment, ranging from For those with a credential, however, labor force participation was above 80 percent for every education level. In fact, the participation rate for people with a certification or license and at least a high school diploma, regardless of how much additional education they attained, was The participation rate for those with a certification or license but less than a high school diploma was only slightly lower, at An important caveat, however, is that people with less than a high school diploma represent a very small share of those with a professional certification or license.

Higher levels of educational attainment are often required for obtaining a license, so people with a certification or license tend to have higher levels of educational attainment than those without such credentials. See figure 1. Since labor force participation rates are generally higher and unemployment rates lower for people with a professional certification or license, the remainder of this article focuses on the employed.

This section discusses trends in the prevalence of certifications and licenses by demographic factors including age, sex, race, and ethnicity. Employed people with a certification or license were disproportionately of prime working age 25 to 54 or older 55 and over.

Younger workers ages 16 to 24 were considerably less likely to hold one of these credentials, with just 9. Among employed people in their prime working age, those ages 25 to 34 were somewhat less likely to hold one of these credentials The prevalence of certification and licensing did not vary substantially for workers age 35 and over. These patterns held for those with a certification but no license, as well as for those with a license.

See table 3. The low prevalence of certifications and licenses among younger workers is most likely related to the nature of these credentials. Many licenses require certain levels of educational attainment or supervised work experience that are difficult to attain before reaching the age of For example, all states require physicians and surgeons to be licensed, which involves graduating from an accredited medical school and completing residency training in an area of specialty, which typically takes from 7 to 11 years.

Employed women were more likely to hold a certification or license than employed men. Nearly all of the difference was due to the gender gap in the prevalence of licenses, rather than certifications. Employed women This may reflect, in part, differences in the occupational distribution of employment between women and men. For example, women are more likely to be employed as teachers or nurses, occupations that generally require a license. In , employed men were slightly more likely to hold a certification, at 2.

Not including those ages 16 to 24, the gap between women and men in the prevalence of these credentials declined with age. Women ages 25 to 34 were about 10 percentage points more likely to hold a certification or license than men ages 25 to 34, while women age 55 and over were only about 2 percentage points more likely to hold one of these credentials.

A look at the major race and ethnicity groups reveals that employed Whites had the highest prevalence of certification and licensing, at Employed people of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, at These patterns generally held for both those with a certification but no license and those with a license.

As with age, employed women were more likely than their male counterparts to hold a certification or license within each major race and ethnicity group. Of all these groups, White women, at This may also reflect differences in age, educational attainment, and occupation among employed people in the major race and ethnicity groups. See table 4. Reaching a specified level of educational attainment is often a requirement for obtaining a professional certification or license.

CPS data show that, in , employed people age 25 and over with higher levels of educational attainment were more likely to hold a certification or license. Just under half This pattern was mostly driven by differences in the prevalence of licenses, rather than certifications, between education levels.

However, workers with at least some college experience were more likely to have a certification but no license than those with only a high school diploma or less education.

See figure 2. The prevalence of certification and licensing varied among the three advanced degree categories. Workers with a professional degree Among the employed, the prevalence of certifications and licenses varied widely by occupation. In , the share of workers with a currently active certification or license was highest among healthcare practitioners and technical occupations In addition, about half of workers in education, training, and library occupations By contrast, there were four occupational groups in which less than 1 in 10 workers held a certification or license: food preparation and serving related occupations 7.

See figure 3. In nearly all occupational groups, licenses appear to be the dominant credential. In the groups in which these credentials were most prevalent, more than 90 percent of credentialed workers held a license. In every occupational group, more workers held a license than a certification. The only exception was computer and mathematical occupations, in which 6.

The share of workers with a certification but no license reached 4 percent in only two other occupational groups—installation, maintenance, and repair occupations 4. However, it is important to note that the occupational groups displayed in figure 3 are broad. Some jobs within an occupational group may have a high prevalence of certification and licensing, while others in the same group may not.

In , a large majority of jobs with the highest share of licensed workers were in healthcare. However, when occupations were ranked according to the number of licensed workers, a wide variety of sectors were represented. In , there were 2. The level of licensed physicians and surgeons , did not quite reach one million, but the share with a license was about 85 percent.

Other detailed occupations with a high number of licensed workers include secondary school teachers ,; 76 percent ; real estate brokers and sales agents ,; 69 percent ; and hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists ,, 68 percent. These results show that occupational licenses are prevalent in a diverse range of detailed occupations that are spread across different industry sectors. See table 5; also, data for all detailed occupations is available in an unpublished table upon request.

Please email cpsinfo bls. In , professional certifications were less prevalent than occupational licenses, and they were most common among workers in computer and mathematical occupations. Examples of occupations with a high prevalence of certifications include computer network architects 24 percent , information security analysts 18 percent , and network and computer systems administrators 15 percent.

In , the share of workers with a certification but no license did not exceed 25 percent in any detailed occupation with employment of more than 50, Among workers in management occupations, , held a professional certification in Other occupations with the largest number of certified workers include software developers, members of the clergy, registered nurses, automotive service technicians and mechanics, and financial managers.

As mentioned previously, there is often substantial variation in the prevalence of these credentials within occupational groups. Consider legal occupations, for example, which include lawyers, judicial law clerks; judges, magistrates and other judicial workers; paralegals and legal assistants; 11 and miscellaneous legal support workers.