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“Active” is a word, not a fact
Every license record carries two separate facts: a status word and an expiration date. Usually they agree. Sometimes the word says current and the date has already passed — and then the word alone cannot carry the weight people put on it.
Nothing here suggests any individual record is improper. Boards record the word and the date on their own cycles, renewals land when they land, and a record can be entirely in order while its two facts briefly disagree. The finding is about what a status word is: a label a board recorded, next to a date the same board recorded. When they disagree, the date is the one with a number in it. That is why every record page on this site prints the status and the expiration date side by side, with the date of the records they came from.
Vermont: one record in six
The Vermont Division of Fire Safety publishes the list of its current plumbing and electrical licensees: 11,524 records. Counted against the records’ own date, 1,883 of them — 16.3% — carry expiration dates that have already passed: 895 expired during 2024 and 2025, and 988 more during 2026. A homeowner reading that list meets a wall of current licensees; roughly one in six is current by the list’s say-so and past due by its own date. Vermont records are not yet published on this site; the count is of the board’s published list itself, and it is the extreme case that makes the general point impossible to miss.
Connecticut: the mechanism, visible
Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection records three current statuses, and the published records here carry 508 whose expiration dates have passed, out of 46,021. The split is the story:
| Status as recorded | Records | Expiration date passed |
|---|---|---|
| ACTIVE | 45,555 | 52 |
| ACTIVE IN RENEWAL | 447 | 447 |
| ACTIVE UNDER REVIEW | 19 | 9 |
Every one of the 447 ACTIVE IN RENEWAL records is past its date — which is what the words themselves say, once you read them literally: the credential is in renewal because its term ended. The date printed is the old term’s end. The genuine word-versus-date disagreements are the 52 plain ACTIVE records (and 9 of the 19 under review): no mechanism in the words explains those; the two facts simply disagree, and a reader who checks only the word will never know.
Ohio, Washington, Florida, Minnesota, Oregon
Ohio’s Construction Industry Licensing Board publishes a roster of current licenses. Among the records published here, 32 of 10,462 ACTIVE records carry passed expiration dates, with 14 more among the 1,800 ACTIVE IN RENEWAL records. Counted on the board’s full roster instead, the figure is 61 of 12,389 rows — the difference is records this site holds back under its publishing rules, stated here so the two bases are never confused.
Washington’s Department of Labor & Industries records 76,097 credentials as ACTIVE in the published set; 62 of them carry expiration dates before the records’ date. Florida’s DBPR records 96,553 licenses as Current — Active; 5 are past their expiration dates (8 across the wider Current family of 108,307). Minnesota’s DLI records 11,580 published licenses as Issued; 2 are past date. Oregon’s Construction Contractors Board publishes no status word — its list is the claim — and 11 of its 45,750 listed records carry passed expiration dates.
Where the word and the date agree
In seven states’ published records, the disagreement does not occur at all — every record whose status presents it as current carries an expiration date that has not passed:
| State | Current presentation | Records | Past expiration date |
|---|---|---|---|
| California | CLEAR | 232,413 | 0 |
| Arizona | Active | 58,329 | 0 |
| Illinois | ACTIVE | 4,828 | 0 |
| District of Columbia | Active | 5,832 | 0 |
| Virginia | (no status word — current lists) | 53,478 | 0 |
| Texas | Current (Responsible Master Plumbers) | 8,551 | 0 |
| Delaware | Active | 8 | 0 |
And one state cannot be tested by word at all: Texas’s TDLR publishes no status for its contractor licenses, and 3,258 of 36,019 contractor records in its published data — 9% — carry expiration dates that have passed, with no word beside them to agree or disagree. There, the date is the only currency test there is, which is the test this site applies before publishing a Texas record.
Reading a record
The practical habit is short: read the date, not just the word. A status word tells you what the board recorded; the expiration date tells you until when. On every record here — California, Washington, Florida — the two print together, beside the date of the records they came from, so the comparison this study makes statewide is one you can make on any single license in seconds.
Methodology
Sources: the published records of the Vermont Division of Fire Safety, the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection, the Ohio Construction Industry Licensing Board, the Washington Department of Labor & Industries, the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, the Oregon Construction Contractors Board, the California Contractors State License Board, the Arizona Registrar of Contractors, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, the District Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation, the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners and the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, and the Delaware Division of Professional Regulation — Arizona’s dated November 2, 2026, the rest November 3, 2026.
“Past its expiration date” means the expiration date recorded for the license is earlier than the date of the records it appears in. “Presents as current” uses each board’s own presentation: the status words listed in the tables (for Florida, the Current — Active pair; the wider Current family is counted separately where stated), presence on a board’s published list of current licensees where the board records no status word, and — for Ohio — both the basis of the records published here and the board’s full roster, each labeled. Some states’ record pages are not yet live on this site; counts on the “published here” basis describe the records this site holds for publication for that state under its publishing rules. No individual record is characterized beyond the two facts the board itself recorded for it.
More studies
- The disappearing licenseIn some states a revoked license isn't marked — it leaves the published records entirely, and a search that finds nothing starts to look like a clean answer.
- Licensed, or just registered?Most Washington contractor records are registrations, Minnesota keeps a register literally named “Registered Unlicensed,” and the two words do not mean the same thing.
- The discipline mapWhere discipline is published with the license records, where it lives somewhere else entirely, and where it cannot be had at any price — and what each case means for a search.
- Licensed since whenHow long the current licenses in each state's records have been held: medians, the share held 25 years or more, and the oldest license still current in California — issued in 1950.