Data

How long trade licences have been held

Last updated October 22, 2026

Next update November 2026

A state licence carries a date. Eight state files publish the date a licence was first issued, and we hold 285,012 trade companies matched to them with a usable date. This page counts how long each company’s oldest licence has been held. More than half, 156,655 companies or 55.0%, hold one issued 10 or more years ago.

That number matters for a plain reason. A licence date is a floor, not a ceiling. A roofer licensed in 2009 has had reasons to write estimates, job files and invoices since 2009. If you’re wondering whether your own records go back far enough to count, the licence on the wall is the first answer.

By file

Each row is one state file. Each cell counts companies, not licences. A company holding several licences in the file counts once, at the age of its oldest.

FileCompaniesUnder 5 yrs5–910–1920+
New Jersey (DCA)60,84617,78910,55120,86511,641
California (CSLB)58,25616,3459,16312,87519,873
Virginia (DPOR)52,91011,0817,86114,95619,012
Florida (DBPR)40,29115,3747,0408,9038,974
Connecticut (DCP licences)40,16014,3166,4737,50011,871
New York State (DMV repair shops)21,0973,7943,5414,8298,933
Minnesota (DLI)9,2482,0631,5084,5051,172
Oregon (CCB)2,204998460409337
All eight files285,01281,76046,59774,84281,813

The rows add up to 285,012, the same total as the trade table below. Each company sits in one row.

By trade

The same 285,012 companies, split by the one trade our pipeline gives each company.

TradeCompaniesUnder 5 yrs5–910–1920+
General112,80936,86120,22530,18525,538
Electrical56,59715,4548,49012,87619,777
HVAC38,3149,2715,82214,0639,158
Plumbing38,2279,9645,3358,93613,992
Auto repair21,0973,7943,5414,8298,933
Roofing17,2536,2263,0293,7144,284
Solar715190155239131
All trades285,01281,76046,59774,84281,813

The shares, worked out

Counts are hard to compare across a file of 2,204 and one of 60,846. Here are the same rows as shares of each row’s total, rounded to one decimal.

Row10+ yrs20+ yrs
New York State (DMV)65.2%42.3%
Virginia (DPOR)64.2%35.9%
Minnesota (DLI)61.4%12.7%
California (CSLB)56.2%34.1%
New Jersey (DCA)53.4%19.1%
Connecticut (DCP)48.2%29.6%
Florida (DBPR)44.4%22.3%
Oregon (CCB)33.8%15.3%
Auto repair65.2%42.3%
HVAC60.6%23.9%
Plumbing60.0%36.6%
Electrical57.7%34.9%
Solar51.7%18.3%
General49.4%22.6%
Roofing46.4%24.8%
All eight files55.0%28.7%

What the tables show

Across the eight files, 81,813 companies hold a licence 20 years old or more. That’s 28.7% of the total. Another 74,842 sit between 10 and 19 years. 81,760, also 28.7%, are under five.

The 20-plus column is the largest of the four, but only just. It holds 53 more companies than the under-five column. Old licences are as common here as new ones.

New York’s repair shops are the oldest row. 42.3% hold a registration issued 20 or more years ago. Every auto repair company in the tables comes from that file: 21,097 in the row and 21,097 in the trade.

Virginia is the oldest of the contractor files. 64.2% of its 52,910 companies hold a licence issued 10 or more years ago. California follows at 56.2%, after Minnesota’s 61.4%, with 19,873 companies in the 20-plus column. That’s the largest 20-plus cell in the table.

New Jersey is the biggest file, at 60,846 companies. Its weight sits in the middle: 20,865 companies, or 34.3%, between 10 and 19 years.

Florida and Oregon lean young. Florida has 38.2% under five years, Oregon 45.3%. Oregon is also small, at 2,204, because we only collect roofing, HVAC and plumbing businesses there. Read its shares with that in mind.

Minnesota looks odd at first. 48.7% of its companies sit in the 10 to 19 column, and only 12.7% at 20 or more. The methodology explains a likely cause.

By trade, plumbing and electrical carry the oldest licences among the building trades. 36.6% of plumbing companies and 34.9% of electrical ones hold a licence 20 or more years old. HVAC has the highest share at 10 or more among the building trades, 60.6%, with 14,063 companies in the 10 to 19 column alone. Roofing is the youngest trade here, with 36.1% under five years. Even so, 7,998 roofing companies hold a licence 10 or more years old.

Licence age is a floor on the record

A licence date tells you when a state first let a company or its master do the work. It doesn’t tell you when the company opened. It doesn’t tell you when the paperwork started. Some trade businesses were quoting jobs before the licence came, or under someone else’s.

What it does tell you is the minimum. A company that has held an electrical licence for 15 years has had 15 years of reasons to write things down. Estimates that went out. Jobs that came in. Inspections passed and failed. Change orders, callbacks, service tickets. Even if half of it went into a skip, what’s left can still be a long run.

For person-licensed trades, read the date as the master’s. In New Jersey, a master plumber or master HVACR contractor holds the licence personally. The state issues no separate business licence for those trades. Florida’s date is the qualifier’s original licensure date. In Connecticut, the electrical, plumbing and heating licences are a person’s too; where no business name is filed, the holder is the business and the date is theirs. So in those rows, the age is how long the person running the work has been licensed. That’s often longer than the business name has existed. It’s still a fair floor on how long that person has been pricing and doing jobs.

Why the length of the record matters

Polyshares says what moves its interest in plain words. On its home page: “The length and texture of the record matter more than headcount or revenue.” Our own reading: a 12-person plumbing company with 20 years of service tickets has length. A large firm with three years does not.

Polyshares publishes some of its deals. One is a roofing company at $450,000 (indicative, not an offer), a “perpetual exclusive license to the operational record,” “anonymized before delivery.” Polyshares does not publish how many years of records sat behind that deal. A past deal doesn’t predict an offer for anyone else.

What we can say from the tables is this. Of the 17,253 roofing companies here, 4,284 hold a licence issued 20 or more years ago. Each of those has had two decades of reasons to keep estimates and job files. Whether they kept them is the question only the owner can answer.

What this means for a trade company

Start with your licence date. Then ask what you kept from that date on. Our own examples, by trade, of records that pile up with the years:

  • Roofing. Estimates and the revised estimates, supplements, change orders, job photos, warranty claims. Our roofing companies page goes file by file.
  • HVAC. Service histories, maintenance agreements, the call notes on what a technician found and replaced. See the HVAC companies page.
  • Plumbing. Job notes, callbacks, quotes that went out twice before a yes. See the plumbing companies page.
  • Auto repair. Repair orders, inspection findings, declined work, comebacks. See the auto repair shops page.
  • Electrical and general. Bids, takeoffs, inspection records, punch lists, closeout files.

The records are de-identified before use. Polyshares says “identifying fields, customer names, emails, and account numbers are stripped.” Customer names and payments are never what’s wanted. What’s wanted is how the work was done: how an estimate became a job, how a change order was settled, how a repair was diagnosed. Our explainer on what data buyers actually want from a trade business walks through it record by record.

Polyshares also says “the company pays nothing and keeps its data.” Our estimate asks how many years of records you have. Your licence date gives you a starting number. Got 10 years or more?

What is never included

In the licence count above, we hold counts only. No names, addresses or phone numbers sit on this page.

In a licence of records, some things stay out. Polyshares says its licence “does not cover what you hold on behalf of your own clients.” Our advice: keep card numbers, bank exports, payroll and anything a customer owns out of any export. Polyshares says identifying fields, customer names, emails and account numbers are “stripped by a specialist PII partner before Polyshares or any lab sees the record.” How it’s safe covers what leaves your systems and when.

For the count of licensed contractors by board, without the ages, see licensed trade contractors by state board.

Methodology

What is counted. Each number is a count of distinct trade companies in our database that carry at least one licence from one of the eight files with a usable issue date. Companies, not licences: a company matched to several licences in a file keeps the oldest licence’s age. Each company sits in one file row and one trade row, so both tables add up to 285,012. We read the host database on 22 October 2026 at 11:26 UTC.

The age. The age is whole years from the issue date of the company’s oldest matched licence to the read date. The buckets are under 5 years, 5 to 9, 10 to 19, and 20 or more. The shares on this page are each bucket divided by its row total, rounded to one decimal.

The date field in each file.

  • California, Contractors State License Board. The master licence list from the CSLB data portal, field IssueDate. We keep licences with a clear status and an expiry not yet passed, holding a roofing, plumbing, HVAC, electrical or solar class.
  • New Jersey, Division of Consumer Affairs. The bulk licence download, field issue_date, active licences only. Electrical business permits and home improvement contractor registrations are business licences, so the date is the business’s own. Master HVACR and master plumber are a person’s licence: the date is the master’s. Where the file publishes a trading name for a master, we leave the date empty, so a younger trading business isn’t aged by its master’s licence. Unless the same company holds a dated licence from another file, it has no age and is not in the tables.
  • Virginia, Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation. The Board for Contractors’ Class A, B and C lists and the legacy Class A list, field CERTIFICATION DATE. Expired licences on the lists are not removed.
  • Florida, Department of Business and Professional Regulation. The licensee extract files, the qualifier’s original licensure date. A licence with no business name is dropped.
  • Connecticut, Department of Consumer Protection. The state licences and credentials file, field issuedate, the first issue of the credential (the current term is a separate date). The trade licences are a person’s: where no business name is filed, the holder is the business and the date is theirs. The Connecticut row counts only these licences.
  • New York State, Department of Motor Vehicles. Registered repair shops and body repair shops, field origional_issuance_date (spelled that way in the file): the original application or approval date for that business type. The dataset keeps facilities expired less than six years.
  • Minnesota, Department of Labor and Industry. The contractor exports, field Orig_Date, business rows only. Our collector notes that for plumbing contractors the original date is often 1 January 2012, when their licensing moved to the department. For those companies the age is a lower bound. That likely explains Minnesota’s bulge in the 10 to 19 column.
  • Oregon, Construction Contractors Board. Active licences, field orig_regis_date, the original registration. The board’s endorsements carry no trade, so we read the trade from the business name and keep roofing, HVAC and plumbing only.

One trade per company. Our pipeline gives each company one trade, set by the first record that created it. A later licence from another file never changes it.

What was left out, and why. Washington Labor and Industries publishes the current licence’s effective date, not the first one. The Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners list carries 711 placeholder dates. The New York City Department of Buildings, Texas TDLR, Iowa contractor registration and Ohio OCILB files carry the current term’s dates, so their ages would read near zero. Household goods movers are not a trade; they have their own page, household goods carriers by state. The Colorado and Connecticut business registries carry no licence date. Connecticut’s DMV general repairers are left out too: that file publishes no issue date, so the Connecticut row counts only the Consumer Protection licences. New York’s DMV file still gives auto repair its row.

Rows with no usable date. 291 company rows whose age reads exactly zero are left out. Their zero is not a licence date: a row without a date is stored as zero when it joins a company we already hold. They carry no licence age, so they’re not counted.

Outliers. A few rows carry issue dates over 60 years old. The oldest reads 121 years in Connecticut and 107 in Florida. We count them as the state published them. They only ever fall in the 20-or-more column, so they can’t move any other bucket.

Refresh. The tables are rebuilt monthly from fresh downloads and a new read of the database. The next update is due 22 November 2026.

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