We hold 1,019,848 contractor licence records pulled from state licensing boards. This page reports what is actually in them. The figures are recalculated from the raw data every time this page loads.
Half of all registered contractors in some states hold an expired licence
| State | Records | Expired | Share | Avg years lapsed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wisconsin | 10,312 | 6,074 | 58.9 % | 8.6 |
| Minnesota | 217,375 | 115,039 | 52.9 % | 9.5 |
| Washington | 161,114 | 80,830 | 50.2 % | 3.2 |
| Texas | 35,881 | 7,751 | 21.6 % | 1.6 |
| Oregon | 55,982 | 4,085 | 7.3 % | 0.3 |
| California | 244,910 | 12,079 | 4.9 % | 0.3 |
What this does and does not mean
The honest reading is not that half the contractors in Minnesota are working illegally. It is that state registers differ enormously in how they handle records that lapse. California removes or flags them quickly, which is why only a small share of its records are expired. Minnesota and Wisconsin keep them, some for a decade or more.
That difference matters for anyone hiring. Finding a name in a state register proves nothing on its own. The expiry date is the part that counts, and in several states most records fail that test.
Insurance and bonding: only one state publishes it
Of the registers examined, Oregon is the only one that publishes the insurer and bond amount alongside the licence. Of its 55,985 records, 88.4 % name an insurance carrier, and the average bond is $27,313.
Everywhere else, a homeowner cannot tell from the public record whether a licensed contractor carries insurance at all. That is a gap in consumer protection, not a gap in our data.
Method and limits
- Sources: California CSLB, Florida DBPR, Minnesota DLI, Washington L&I, Oregon CCB, Texas TDLR. All are public records.
- Records are a snapshot taken in June 2026 and are not live. Boards update on their own schedules.
- Only states with more than 10,000 records are shown; smaller samples are too noisy to compare.
- Seventeen states, including Texas, Illinois, Ohio and New York, issue no statewide general contractor licence at all. Their absence here is not a finding about their contractors.
- We publish the records unedited. Where a board publishes nothing, we show nothing.
Journalists and researchers are welcome to use these figures with attribution to The Toolbox Pro. To check an individual contractor, use the free licence lookup.
