The public read on the licensed trades workforce.
Free, ungated, published quarterly from the state registers themselves. This is the first print. As of 2026-08-09 we hold 1,550,721 working licenses, with 44 states at publishable coverage.
Masters are 12.7% of the licensed workforce, and every shortage story is about them. In most states a master is what legally qualifies a company to operate. The tier is not a seniority label, it is permission to trade, and when one leaves a company the company stops being able to work.
Tiers sum to 1,550,721 exactly, including 35 records not yet mapped to a tier. Federal employment data estimates how many electricians work. It cannot tell you how many hold a master license in this county today.
The pipeline ratio.
Apprentices per journeyman. Above 1.0 the trade is replacing itself faster than it is aging out. Below it, the pool is thinning.
The denominator is 21 states, not 44, and that is the whole discipline of this number. Only 28 registers license both tiers at all. Seven of those record apprentices as a residual rather than a real registration: Alabama lists 4 apprentices against 12,923 journeymen. Including them drags the ratio to 0.492, and that movement would be filing practice, not the workforce.
We publish the basis with the figure and hold it fixed between prints. A ratio whose denominator moves quietly is a number someone can catch shifting.
Licensed supply by state.
Click any state for what its register holds, what it does not, and why.
How the number is made.
- BasisWorking licenses only. Lapsed, expired and revoked records are held but excluded from supply figures.
- IngestEach register pulled fresh, in full. No sampling, no incremental deltas from the source.
- GateFive checks before a run counts. Plus a config fingerprint, so a scope change cannot pass as growth.
- ThresholdA state publishes at 1,500 working licenses. Below that, coverage is stated as in progress rather than printed as a count.
- ProvenanceEvery event carries its basis. Observed is publishable. Inferred from absence never is.
- CorrectionsOpen to anyone. Licensees correct their own records and we keep the evidence.