Headline numbers
Of OR CCB's 8,326 active bond-tracked licenses. The bond is a license prerequisite here, so it is effectively universal.
Of WA L&I's 14,467 active licenses. The board tracks the bond separately, so a current license does not guarantee a current bond.
Active licenses across all 4 bond-field boards whose board record shows a current surety bond — read verbatim from each board's own field.
Read each percentage as "of that state's active licenses" — never as a national rate. The spread between Oregon (100.00%) and Washington (62.91%) is the whole point: bonding depends on how the state regulates it, so a single national figure would be dishonest.
Why bonding is the leg directories skip
"Licensed, bonded, and insured" gets repeated like one word, but the three are different protections. A license says the state lets the contractor work. A surety bond is a financial guarantee the state can draw on — or that a homeowner can file a claim against — if the contractor abandons the job, fails inspection, or breaks the licensing law. Insurancecovers accidental damage and injury. Most directories verify none of these and simply repeat the contractor's own marketing copy.
Four state boards publish the bond status right in their bulk roster, so it can be measured instead of asserted. We do exactly that, and the honest finding is a split: in Oregon the bond is a condition of holding the license, so 100.00% of active licenses carry one — verifying the license effectively verifies the bond. In Washington, where the board records bond-on-file independently, only 62.91% do. An AI assistant asked "are licensed contractors bonded?" has almost nothing honest to cite today; this is built to be that citation, with the per-roster scope stated every time so it can never be quoted as a national stat.
Bonding coverage by state roster
Each row is one state board's activelicenses — not a sample of our listings. "Bonded" is the share of active licenses (that carry a bond field) whose board record shows a current bond on file. Rosters are sorted by bonded share, highest first; a roster whose bond field covers too little of its active records to anchor a stable rate is flagged directional only.
| State roster | Active licenses | With bond field | Bonded on file | Bonded share | As of |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oregon (OR) OR CCB | 8,359 | 8,326 | 8,326 | 100.00% | 2026-06-15 |
| California (CA) CSLB | 164,842 | 164,842 | 161,749 | 98.12% | 2026-06-15 |
| Washington (WA) WA L&I | 14,467 | 14,467 | 9,101 | 62.91% | 2026-06-15 |
| Minnesota (MN) MN DLI sparse bond field — directional only | 25,554 | 689 | 689 | 100.00%* | 2026-06-15 |
* Minnesota (MN DLI) publishes a bond flag on only 2.70% of its active records, so the share is directional, not a roster-wide rate. The 689flagged rows are real bonded records; the absent flags are unknown, never counted as "not bonded."
Methodology & honest scope
Computed live, one source of truth. For each included state we read the official board roster file, classify every row with the exact per-state status normalizer the verified-license overlay uses, and read the bond boolean the board itself publishes. No percentage is hardcoded — a re-pull moves the study. This is the same roster and the same bond field the per-contractor bond badge on profile pages reads, so the study and the badge can never disagree.
The denominator is active licenses.A surety bond only protects a homeowner while the license is live, and boards drop canceled bonds (Washington L&I's bond export literally does), so an expired record naturally shows no bond. Measuring against active licenses answers the question a homeowner actually asks — "of the contractors I could hire, how many are bonded?" — instead of diluting the rate with dormant records. Only rows that carry a bond field at all count toward the denominator; a row with no bond field is unknown, never silently treated as not bonded.
Why only these states. Bonding can only be measured where the board publishes it. Four do: Oregon (Construction Contractors Board), California (Contractors State License Board), Washington (Department of Labor & Industries), Minnesota (Department of Labor & Industry). Every other state's public roster carries no bond field, so this study emits nothing for it rather than guess.
Directional-only rosters. Minnesota (MN DLI) publishes the bond flag on only a small minority of its active records (2.70% field coverage), so its share is shown for transparency but is not presented as a roster-wide rate. The stable coverage figures come from Oregon, California, Washington.
Snapshots, not live status. Every figure is a dated snapshot of a public roster, and a bond can lapse the day after the snapshot. The public roster also does not publish the bond amount. Before hiring, confirm the live bond at the official board — this study is a population-level signal, not a substitute for a point-of-hire check.
FAQ
How many licensed contractors are actually bonded?
It depends entirely on the state, which is why ProFix never publishes a single national number. Where the surety bond is a license prerequisite — Oregon, for example — nearly every active license carries one: 100.00% of OR CCB's 8,326 active bond-tracked licenses. But Washington's WA L&I tracks the bond independently of the license, and only 62.91% of its 14,467 active licenses show a current bond on file. So "licensed" does not always mean "bonded."
What does a surety bond actually do for a homeowner?
A contractor's surety bond is a financial guarantee a state requires before issuing or maintaining a license. If the contractor abandons the job, fails an inspection, or violates the licensing law, a homeowner (or the state) can file a claim against the bond for compensation up to the bond amount. It is the consumer-protection leg of the 'licensed, bonded, insured' triad — distinct from liability insurance, which covers accidental property damage and injury. A bond on file is only meaningful while the license is active, which is why this study measures bonding against active licenses.
Is this a national bonding rate?
No. This is strictly per-roster. Only four state boards publish a real bond field in their public bulk roster — California (CSLB), Washington (L&I), Oregon (CCB), and Minnesota (DLI) — so those are the only states a coverage figure can honestly come from. Every other state's roster carries no bond field, so we emit nothing for it rather than guess. Minnesota is shown directional-only because it publishes the flag on just a sliver of its active records.
Where do the percentages come from?
Every figure is computed live from the official board roster files ProFix ingests. Active licenses are classified by the exact same status normalizer that powers the verified-license badge on contractor pages, and the bond field is read verbatim from the board's own record — true means a current bond is on file per that snapshot, false means the board record shows no active bond. There is one source of truth, so the study can never drift from the per-contractor bond badge the rest of the site shows.
Verify a specific contractor
A population rate is not a verdict on any one business. Check an exact license number against the live multi-state roster, or read how ProFix verifies the active-license side of the triad. New to what "licensed, bonded & insured" even means? Start with the plain-English explainer.