Yes! I rarely see others mention this. It's always just "licence to call yourself an X." As though the job title itself is something important.

The other thing to note is that certain jobs can be easily offshored. If you can't get a local (data scientist/software engineer/ journalist) to do what you want, you can just pay a foreigner to do it. The same is not true of doctors and lawyers, due to the extra privileges you point out.