What the Virginia register actually licenses, how many hold it, and at what level.
As of October 6, 2026, the Virginia state register carries 12,849 license records for plumbers, blending individual tradespeople with contractor businesses, 7,340 of them at master level.
Not comparable per resident: this register blends individual and contractor licenses, so the raw total is not one kind of thing. A per-resident rate and a state ranking are withheld here; compare by credential tier below instead.
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“How many plumbers” has more than one honest answer, and published figures disagree because they count different things without saying so. Here is each measure ATI holds for Virginia, named.
| Measure | Count | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Licensed workers on the state register | 12,849 | Records the register does not mark expired, revoked or surrendered, and that it evidences as a license actually held. This is the figure every ATI surface reports as `current`, and the figure this page leads with. |
| ...of those, explicitly marked active | 10,857 | The narrower subset a register flags as active. Smaller, because many states publish no status at all and those records are counted above but not here. |
| All license records, active or not | 11,044 | Includes lapsed, expired and inactive records. Larger, and not a workforce count. |
| Industry employment (BLS QCEW) | 30,772 | Everyone on the payroll of establishments in this industry, including office and sales staff, and counting a person once per job rather than once per license. |
| Estimated workers in this occupation (ATI model) | 15,081 | Not a published figure: county construction employment scaled by this occupation's share of the metro workforce. An estimate, shown as one. |
| Employer establishments | 2,313 | Physical business locations, not people. BLS QCEW where the county is disclosed, otherwise an ATI estimate on the same occupation share. |
| Registered apprentices | 816 | In a registered program, working toward a license but not yet holding one. |
ATI's headline figure is the first row: individual people holding an active license, counted from the state register itself and refreshed nightly. See methodology and sources.
| State | Licensed plumbers | Per 100k |
|---|---|---|
| Maine | 15,942 | 1142.2 |
| Minnesota | 15,091 | 263.0 |
| Virginia | 12,849 | — |
| Idaho | 11,610 | 590.9 |
| Wisconsin | 10,330 | 174.8 |
Virginia is part of 415,580 licensed plumbers nationally.
Not comparable per resident: this register blends individual and contractor licenses, so the raw total is not one kind of thing. A per-resident rate and a state ranking are withheld here; compare by credential tier below instead.
This page is a free snapshot of Virginia. Track the same market every night and see which contractors just got licensed, added a trade, or dropped off, and pull the full record, with contact details where available, on any of them. Get the weekly intelligence email on the markets you follow. ATI is in private beta; apply for access.
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