WELL, YES: Costs of occupational licensing fall heaviest on vulnerable Tennesseans.

An archival search of newspapers could not locate a single instance of consumer harm from unlicensed barbers before the first major attempts to license the profession in Nashville in 1903. In fact, the Tennessean asked at that time, “Is there sound reason for the enactment of a barbers’ licensing law?”

Licensing laws are almost always at the behest of the occupation being licensed, not of consumers.

Here’s the longer study being reported.