This study examines the influence of occupational licensing on two significant occupations that provide similar health care services: occupational therapists and physical therapists. Since many of the tasks that these occupations overlap, individuals in both occupations can have legal jurisdiction over these tasks. We examine how these two occupations interact with one another in the labor market on wage determination and employment. Unlike previous analyses of occupational licensing, our study evaluates two professions that are female dominated both within the vocations, and among its leadership. Our results show that the ability of physical therapists to have direct access to patients is associated with a reduction in hourly earnings for occupational therapists, suggesting there is substitution for certain overlapping service tasks across the two occupations. The ability of these two occupations to be mainly substitutes for one another provides new evidence on how the growing numbers of regulated occupations that provide similar tasks influence one another.

本研究考察了职业许可对两个提供相似医疗服务的重要职业的影响：职业治疗师和物理治疗师。由于这些职业的许多任务重叠，因此两个职业中的个人都可以对这些任务具有法律管辖权。我们研究了这两种职业在劳动力市场上关于工资确定和就业的相互作用。与先前对职业许可的分析不同，我们的研究评估了在职业内及其领导中女性主导的两个职业。我们的结果表明，理疗师直接与患者接触的能力与职业治疗师每小时收入的减少有关，建议在两个职业之间替代某些重叠的服务任务。这两个职业相互替代的能力提供了新的证据，说明越来越多的提供类似任务的受管制职业如何相互影响。