The Hardest States to Get Licensed
This ranks 50 states on 4 trades, not on every occupation a state licenses. We hold a primary source and a quotation from it for general contractors, plumbers, landscapers and cleaning businesses in every state, 200 records in all, and this page counts how many of those 4 trades each state reaches with a statewide licensing credential. California and Oregon reach all 4. It is a breadth measure. It says nothing about how hard any single license is to get.
Cite this study
This dataset is free to republish under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Journalists and researchers are welcome to cite the figures with a link back.
MyStateLLC State Trade Licensing Breadth Index (2026). All 50 states scored on how many of 4 verified trades carry a statewide licensing credential. Source: MyStateLLC primary-source review of state licensing boards and statutes, verified 2026-09-03. Available at: https://www.mystatellc.com/research/hardest-states-to-get-licensed
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.mystatellc.com/research/hardest-states-to-get-licensed">MyStateLLC State Trade Licensing Breadth Index</a>, based on MyStateLLC primary-source review of state licensing boards and statutes, verified 2026-09-03.</p>
The headline findings
A statewide credential reaches all 4 trades in 2 of 50 states (California and Oregon) and none of them in 4 (Kansas, Missouri, New York and Wyoming). Across the 200 published records, 115 carry a statewide credential, 21 are set by locality or specialty, and 64 record no statewide license. The trades themselves are far apart: plumbers carry a statewide credential in 44 states and cleaning businesses in 2.
Statewide credential in all 4 trades
- California
- Oregon
Alphabetical. The band is a tie, and no rank separates them.
No statewide credential in any of the 4
- Kansas
- Missouri
- New York
- Wyoming
Alphabetical, and no rank separates them. Read the row before reading this as light-touch. Most of it is the locality column, not an absence of licensing.
Trades by how many states license them
- plumbers44 of 50
- general contractors36 of 50
- landscapers33 of 50
- cleaning businesses2 of 50
States issuing a statewide credential that reaches the trade.
Every state and every trade
Grouped by how many of the 4 trades carry a statewide credential, highest first. Inside a group the order is alphabetical and means nothing. Each cell is the same wording the state page prints in its at-a-glance row, so a cell reading “Yes, with conditions” or “Through contractor licensing” is telling you the headline count in the last column is the crudest thing in the row. Select a state and trade to read the license name, the issuing board and the source we read.
2 states at 4 of 4, 27 states at 3 of 4, 9 states at 2 of 4, 8 states at 1 of 4 and 4 states at 0 of 4. A state at 0 of 4 is not the same as a state with no licensing: see the second finding below.
Key takeaways
- Only 2 of 50 states license all 4 trades at state level. They are California and Oregon. Even that band is not a flat yes: every one of them carries at least one credential flagged as reaching only part of what the trade does, because the cited source itself exempts the rest.
- A low score is not a light state. Kansas, Missouri, New York and Wyoming record no statewide credential for any of the 4 trades. In 3 of them (Kansas, Missouri and New York) that position comes mostly from records saying licensing is set by locality or specialty rather than by the state, which moves the question rather than removing it. 21 records across the dataset read that way.
- Some of this licensing is contractor licensing under another name. Of the 33 states with a statewide credential reaching landscapers, 22 reach it through general contractor licensing rather than through a license the state issues for that trade.
- The 64 records saying the state issues nothing do not say you need nothing. That distinction is the single most common way a licensing page misleads someone, and it is why the dataset separates “no statewide license” from “varies” and from a record we have not verified.
What the 200 records actually show
1. The top of the ranking, and the caveat sitting on it
2of 50 states license all 4 verified trades at state levelCalifornia and Oregon are the only states where a statewide credential reaches all 4 trades, and the band still carries a caveat: every one of them carries at least one credential with a partial-scope flag, which is set where the cited source itself exempts part of the trade. 6 records across the dataset carry that flag, and each of those state pages prints the exemption immediately under its headline. Thresholds cut the same way. Across the dataset 50 records with a statewide credential carry a dollar threshold and 25 of those are marked incomplete, meaning the figure in the source is not the whole trigger, so neither this page nor the state page prints it as a floor a reader can work below.
California and Oregon tie at 4 of 4 and this page does not break the tie. Ranking them against each other would need a difficulty measure the dataset does not hold: no training hours, examination, bond or fee is recorded in it.
2. Zero statewide licenses does not mean an easy state
21records where licensing is set by locality or specialty, not by the stateKansas, Missouri, New York and Wyoming sit at 0 of 4, and lumping them together would be the mistake this column exists to prevent. In 3 of the 4 (Kansas, Missouri and New York) that position comes mainly from records saying licensing is set locally or by specialty, which is a state that has delegated the question rather than answered no. A reader in one of those states has more work to do, not less: the answer is in a city ordinance or a specialty board rather than in one statewide register. The dataset never represents a state by the absence of a row, which is why this column exists at all and why it is never added to either of the other two.
3. What the licensing actually attaches to
Of the 115 records where a statewide credential exists, 98 require the business itself to be licensed or registered, not only the individuals it employs, 16 attach the credential to qualified individuals, and in 1 of them the source does not answer the question. That first figure is the fact an LLC owner is looking for, and it is also where a flat count would mislead: 64 of those 98 carry a source note setting out when the requirement attaches, and the conditions are not decorative. A company license that attaches only above a residential or commercial dollar figure is a different obligation from one that attaches on the first job. The per-state pages print that note; this page prints the count and sends you there. The 64 records where the state issues no statewide license are outside this count entirely, because no state credential exists there for either to hold, and 17 of the 21 locality records leave it open, which those state pages scope rather than assert.
4. The credential is often not for the trade you searched for
Of the 115 records carrying a statewide credential, 26 name a credential the state issues for something other than the trade you searched for: 24 are general contractor licensing reaching the work, and 2 are a neighbouring credential. They concentrate in one trade: 24 of them sit on landscapers. Those records are still a real obligation, and the state page says so, but the headline on each is written to lead with the fact that the state issues no license of its own for that trade. Of the rest, 2 are recorded as the trade's own license and 87 carry no recorded credential kind at all, so this page leaves that last group unclassified rather than sorting it into a bucket nobody verified.
What this ranking does not measure
Four things a reader could reasonably expect from a page with this title are not in the dataset and therefore not on the page. This section exists so their absence is stated rather than inferred.
- Difficulty. No training hours, examination, experience requirement, bond, insurance minimum or application fee is recorded. A state with a credential for every trade may issue them on an afternoon's paperwork, and a state with one may gate it behind years of documented experience.
- Occupations beyond these 4 trades. States license hundreds of occupations. This page covers general contractors, plumbers, landscapers and cleaning businesses, because those are the trades for which we hold a primary source for every state. A state near the bottom here may license a trade we have not researched.
- Local requirements. City and county registration is not recorded per state, and it is common. That is precisely why the 64 “no statewide license” records are never rendered as “no license needed”.
- Cost. License, permit and examination fees are set by the issuing body and are not in this dataset. The one figure we do publish per state is the LLC formation fee, which is on each state page.
Methodology
Every one of the 200 records was verified against a primary source on 2026-09-03 and names that source, its title and a quotation from it. 86 distinct agency names appear across it, which is a count of names and not of agencies: each record names the issuing body the way its own source does, so one agency can appear under more than one name. 8 records were read from an archive or a third-party copy rather than from the live page, and each of those records says so on its own page, because a citation that is technically a real government URL while the text came from somewhere else is how a fabricated figure gets laundered.
The license status is a four-value field, not a boolean. A statewide credential applies, it varies by locality or specialty, the state issues none, or the record is unverified. Unverified records publish nothing at all, so they cannot be read as a no. This page counts only the first value toward a state's score, prints the second and third in their own columns, and shows anything the accessor withholds as “Not published” rather than shrinking the denominator; 0 of 200 are withheld today. A record that names the date it stops being correct is withheld from that date, so this table can lose a cell without anyone editing it.
The cell text on this page is generated by the same function that writes the at-a-glance row on each state page, from the same file, so the two cannot disagree. Nothing here is drawn from any dataset that lacks a per-record source. This page is informational and is not legal advice. Licensing rules change, so open the state page and follow its citation before you bid, hire or file.
Frequently Asked Questions
Edmond Hui · Founder, MyStateLLC
Edmond Hui is a software engineer and serial entrepreneur based in New York who has founded multiple online businesses across e-commerce, media, and information publishing. Before transitioning into tech, he spent years as a commercial real estate professional closing deals totaling over 100,000 square feet, giving him firsthand experience with business formation and entity structuring. He built MyStateLLC to provide the free, state-specific LLC guidance he wished existed when forming his own companies.