The headline numbers
62.1% of all trade tags, present in 55 jurisdictions.
Listings matched to an official public record across 55 jurisdictions.
Share of all 444,024 trade tags held by the five largest trades.
The 444,024 trade tags come from a slightly smaller 437,353 distinct records, because 6,371 contractors are licensed in more than one trade and carry a tag for each. That gap is small but real, and it is why every figure here is framed as a share of trade tags, never a share of businesses.
What this mix is — and what it is not
This is the trade composition of the contractors ProFix can verify — listings we have matched to an official public record, overwhelmingly state licensing-board rosters. It is nota census of every working tradesperson, and it is not even ProFix's full public directory. That distinction is the single most important thing to understand before reading a single percentage.
The reason matters: a board can only put a trade in our data if that state licenses the trade. California's CSLB registers general contractors, so California contributes a huge block of GC records. Texas licenses electricians and plumbers through the TDLR and the State Board of Plumbing Examiners but has no statewide general-contractor license, so Texas contributes almost no GC records and a mountain of electricians. The national mix is therefore partly a portrait of trade-by-trade demand and partly a map of which licensing systems happen to exist — and the two are tangled together on purpose, because the verifiable population is the honest unit a verification directory can stand behind. For the regulatory half of that story, see our companion study on which states actually license general contractors.
Every trade, by share of trade tags
All 36trades present in the corpus, largest first. "Jurisdictions" is how many of the 55 we cover carry at least one verifiable record in that trade — a breadth signal that separates the universal trades from the regional ones. Each trade links to its ProFix hub.
| Rank | Trade | Trade tags | Share | Jurisdictions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | General Contractor | 275,794 | 62.1% | 55 / 55 |
| 2 | Electrician | 67,919 | 15.3% | 51 / 55 |
| 3 | Plumber | 25,823 | 5.8% | 43 / 55 |
| 4 | HVAC Technician | 21,911 | 4.9% | 43 / 55 |
| 5 | Roofer | 11,814 | 2.7% | 44 / 55 |
| 6 | Concrete Contractor | 10,540 | 2.4% | 45 / 55 |
| 7 | Pool Installer | 3,586 | 0.8% | 26 / 55 |
| 8 | Water/Fire/Mold Restoration | 3,485 | 0.8% | 32 / 55 |
| 9 | Fence Contractor | 2,777 | 0.6% | 30 / 55 |
| 10 | Solar Installer | 2,592 | 0.6% | 32 / 55 |
| 11 | Tree Service | 2,538 | 0.6% | 16 / 55 |
| 12 | Water Well Contractor | 2,241 | 0.5% | 5 / 55 |
| 13 | Fire Protection Contractor | 2,161 | 0.5% | 35 / 55 |
| 14 | Painter | 1,798 | 0.4% | 33 / 55 |
| 15 | Appliance Repair Tech | 1,303 | 0.3% | 20 / 55 |
| 16 | Septic System Contractor | 1,240 | 0.3% | 15 / 55 |
| 17 | Window & Door Installer | 1,062 | 0.2% | 28 / 55 |
| 18 | Landscaper | 1,054 | 0.2% | 17 / 55 |
| 19 | Siding Contractor | 939 | 0.2% | 21 / 55 |
| 20 | Insulation Contractor | 903 | 0.2% | 32 / 55 |
| 21 | Foundation Repair Contractor | 671 | 0.2% | 42 / 55 |
| 22 | Lawn Care Service | 532 | 0.1% | 11 / 55 |
| 23 | Gutter Installer | 392 | 0.1% | 11 / 55 |
| 24 | Garage Door Company | 255 | 0.1% | 13 / 55 |
| 25 | Patio Installer | 158 | 0% | 11 / 55 |
| 26 | Pest Control Service | 131 | 0% | 9 / 55 |
| 27 | Lead Abatement Contractor | 98 | 0% | 12 / 55 |
| 28 | Gas Technician | 82 | 0% | 5 / 55 |
| 29 | Pressure-Washing Service | 74 | 0% | 8 / 55 |
| 30 | Asphalt Sealcoat Contractor | 53 | 0% | 8 / 55 |
| 31 | Outdoor Lighting Installer | 37 | 0% | 6 / 55 |
| 32 | Shed & Pole-Barn Builder | 36 | 0% | 7 / 55 |
| 33 | Computer & Electronics Repair | 10 | 0% | 8 / 55 |
| 34 | Deck Builder | 8 | 0% | 4 / 55 |
| 35 | Heat Pump Installer | 6 | 0% | 3 / 55 |
| 36 | EV Charger Installer | 1 | 0% | 1 / 55 |
| 36 trades | 444,024 | 100% | tag total |
The universal core: 4 trades found almost everywhere
Only 4 trades appear in at least 44 of the 55 jurisdictions we cover — General Contractor, Electrician, Roofer, Concrete Contractor. Every other trade is meaningfully more regional, surfacing in only a subset of states' verifiable rosters. The breadth gap is its own finding: the trades a homeowner can reliably find a license-verifiable pro for in almost any state are a short list, and they are the trades most states actually license.
The regime effect: most general-contractor-heavy vs. most trade-diverse states
The clearest evidence that licensing regime drives the mix is how wildly the general-contractor share swings between states. Below are the 8 most GC-dominated and the 8 most trade-diverse jurisdictions, among the 42 with at least 200verifiable records (smaller states are tallied nationally but not ranked here, so one multi-trade record can't swing a state's share). "Signature trade" is each state's largest non-GC trade.
Most general-contractor-heavy
Read these two columns together and the licensing-regime story is unmistakable. The GC-heavy states are the ones whose boards register general contractors; the diverse states are the ones whose boards instead license specific trades — so an electrician or plumber is what shows up in the public record. Neither column says one state has "more" or "better" contractors. It says their licensing systems make different trades verifiable.
Methodology and honesty notes
- Source. the ProFix Directory gold-tier corpus — contractor listings matched to official state licensing-board public records(CSLB, TDLR/TSBPE, WA L&I, MN DLI, OR CCB, and the other verified-roster states), plus single-source public listings, each scored on ProFix's confidence scorecard. ProFix-published open data, CC-BY-4.0.
- What we count. Trade tags on each record's
trades[]array — not distinct businesses, not licensed-individual headcounts, not a quality signal. A contractor licensed in two trades contributes two tags. - Selection bias is the headline caveat.This is the mix of contractors we can match to a verifiable public record, so it is biased toward whatever trades each state licenses. It is not the true working population of every trade, and not ProFix's full public directory.
- Per-state ranking floor. Only the 42 jurisdictions with at least 200verifiable records are ranked on composition; smaller states are tallied into the national totals but withheld from the state rankings so a single multi-trade record can't swing a share.
- Aggregate only. The committed seed is a histogram of trade tags (national + per-state) and a per-trade jurisdiction-breadth count. It contains no contractor name, slug, phone, or address — nothing that attributes a trade to a named business.
- Computed live. Every number is read from the committed seed at render time (built by
tools/build-trade-distribution-index.tsfrom the per-state gold-tier shards). If the corpus is re-sharded, this page updates automatically — no value here is hardcoded.
Related ProFix research
Frequently asked questions
Which trade is most common among verifiable U.S. contractors?
General contractors. Across 437,353 contractor listings ProFix has matched to an official public record, the "General Contractor" tag is the single most common — 62.1% of all 444,024 trade tags, ahead of Electrician (15.3%) and Plumber (5.8%). This counts trade tags, not distinct businesses, and it reflects the contractors we can verify — see the selection caveat below.
Is this the share of all contractors, or just the ones ProFix can verify?
Just the ones we can verify. This is the trade mix of 437,353 contractor listings matched to an official public record — overwhelmingly state licensing-board rosters. It is not a census of every working tradesperson, and it is not even ProFix's full public directory. The single most load-bearing consequence: a state whose board registers general contractors (e.g. California's CSLB) contributes mostly GC records, while a state that licenses only electricians and plumbers (e.g. Texas's TDLR and Board of Plumbing Examiners) contributes almost no GC records. So the mix is partly a map of which trades each state licenses.
Why do the trade percentages add up over 100% of businesses?
They don't — they add up to 100% of trade tags. A contractor licensed in more than one trade (e.g. plumbing and HVAC) carries more than one tag, so the 444,024 tags come from a slightly smaller 437,353 distinct records (6,371 of them multi-trade). Every percentage on this page is a share of trade tags, and we say so wherever a number appears.
What does 'universal core' mean?
The trades that show up almost everywhere. 4 trades appear in at least 44 of the 55 jurisdictions we cover (an 80% breadth floor): General Contractor, Electrician, Roofer, Concrete Contractor. Most other trades are far more concentrated, appearing in only a handful of states' verifiable rosters.
Where does this data come from?
the ProFix Directory gold-tier corpus — contractor listings matched to official state licensing-board public records (CSLB, TDLR/TSBPE, WA L&I, MN DLI, OR CCB, and the other verified-roster states), plus single-source public listings, each scored on ProFix's confidence scorecard. It is ProFix-published open data (CC-BY-4.0). The figures are aggregate only — a histogram of trade tags, never a per-contractor row — and are read from a committed seed at render time, so they update with the corpus and are never hardcoded.