What the California register actually licenses, how many hold it, and at what level.
As of October 6, 2026, the California state register carries 21,218 contractor licenses for plumbers: businesses, and the individuals who qualify them. California does not license individual plumbers at state level, so this is not a count of workers.
Not comparable per resident: this register licenses CONTRACTORS (businesses and qualifying individuals) rather than individual tradespeople, so this is a count of licensed businesses, not of workers. A per-resident rate and a state ranking are withheld here because they would compare businesses against other states' individual tradespeople.
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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 California, named.
| Measure | Count | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Licensed workers on the state register | 21,218 | 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 | 20,536 | 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 | 21,804 | Includes lapsed, expired and inactive records. Larger, and not a workforce count. |
| Industry employment (BLS QCEW) | 121,076 | 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) | 47,813 | Not a published figure: county construction employment scaled by this occupation's share of the metro workforce. An estimate, shown as one. |
| Employer establishments | 12,999 | Physical business locations, not people. BLS QCEW where the county is disclosed, otherwise an ATI estimate on the same occupation share. |
| Registered apprentices | 3,235 | 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | 25,314 | 361.6 |
| Colorado | 21,560 | 366.8 |
| California | 21,218 | — |
| Florida | 20,304 | — |
| Michigan | 18,403 | 183.3 |
California is part of 415,580 licensed plumbers nationally.
Not comparable per resident: this register licenses CONTRACTORS (businesses and qualifying individuals) rather than individual tradespeople, so this is a count of licensed businesses, not of workers. A per-resident rate and a state ranking are withheld here because they would compare businesses against other states' individual tradespeople.
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