24 May 2015
Numbers
The times during my career that farrier licensing
has been discussed, no one has thought to look stuff up so that is part of my
mission concerning these posts. For this post I decided to look at some numbers
to put into perspective just how small the farrier trade is. At some point of
my life I got tired of walking though it afraid of things and I learned that
being informed, truly informed and not just taking for granted what people told
me or what I saw on television was factual. To that end I am doing my best to
link everything I sat that isn’t my own opinion. In this post I am laying out
some numbers to try to give you a perspective on how small the horse business
is and why the people you might think are against you really don’t care. While some
of the numbers are not current they are what I could find.
Currently, according to the U.S. Census Bureau there
are about 320.9 million people living in the United States of America. In 2013,
the automotive research group CNW (since shuttered because of the death of
their founder) estimated that 87.7% of households owned a car. The same year the Census Bureau estimated that 64% of Americans owned a home. According to a 2005 survey the American HorseCouncil estimated that only 2 million Americans owned a horse, or less than 6/10ths
of 1%. I’ll try to put all that in to perspective for you; according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) there are almost as many Americans who drive semi trucks as Americans who own horses.
Over the years part of the argument for Farrier
licensing has been that we license barbers, contractors, auto mechanics, so on,
and so forth. It’s an argument that is made because, like the art and science
of shoeing a horse these tasks could be performed by novices, however most
consumers don’t realize the intricacies of nor do they care for the
responsibility of doing a good job at whatever task and therefore rely on
professionals so they don’t have to. That said, every morning a vast percentage
of Americans are going to need or want a haircut, a new roof on their house,
or, automotive repair than the finite group who is going to require or wish
hoof care for their horse, so in that aspect the argument is hollow at best.
The point of all of this is that farriers are small potatoes in the grand
scheme of things because, comparatively speaking, there are very few of us. To
complicate both sides of the question nobody knows how many people are
participating in the equine hoof care trades and there doesn’t seem to be a
simple way to find out. If you Google the question you are directed to the
United Kingdom statistics and the standard American Farrier links. If you
search it at the Bureau of Labor Statistics you are directed to a couple of articles
and while the BLS has a numerical classification for “farrier” they don’t seem
to have any numbers or estimates concerning how many people are farriers.
Like words, numbers are things that politicians consider when drafting, accepting or formalizing legislation.
Labels: Farrier Licensing, Licensing
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