California Contractor Compliance Report 2026: 245,883 Licenses Analyzed Against 5 Federal Databases

Key Findings at a Glance

SiteVetter cross-referenced all 245,883 California contractor licenses issued by the Contractors State License Board (CSLB) against four federal enforcement databases: OSHA, the Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, SAM.gov, and the EPA's ECHO system. This is the first comprehensive cross-reference of California's entire contractor database against federal enforcement records.

The headline numbers:

• 13,474 active contractors are operating without required workers' compensation insurance — 7,080 with no policy at all and 6,394 with lapsed (expired) coverage.
• 6,934 contractors (2.8%) have one or more enforcement records across federal databases.
• 19,339 OSHA citations matched to 7,311 California-licensed contractors.
• $53.6 million in back wages owed from DOL wage violation cases matched to California construction firms.
• OSHA signals rose 137% from 2020 to 2025, with 2025 posting the highest year on record.
• Hazardous substance removal contractors have the highest per-capita OSHA citation rate at 795.8 per 1,000 licensees — nearly 80% of the trade.

What follows is the full analysis, broken into six sections: the workers' comp insurance gap, federal enforcement signals, OSHA deep dive by trade and geography, DOL wage violations, risk patterns by license age and entity type, and what GCs should do about it.

The Workers' Comp Gap: 13,474 Contractors Without Required Coverage

California law requires contractors with employees to carry workers' compensation insurance. Those without employees may file an exemption with the CSLB — a provision used by 121,270 licensees (49.3% of all contractors). For a detailed breakdown of these rules and the upcoming SB 216 changes, see our California Workers' Comp Requirements guide.

The problem is not the exemptions. The problem is the 13,474 active contractors who are required to carry coverage and don't.

The Numbers

That's 1 in 17 non-exempt contractors operating without the coverage California law requires. And the lapsed-policy group is arguably more dangerous: these contractors had coverage, stopped paying premiums, and may still present stale certificates of insurance that appear valid on a quick review.

Why This Matters for GCs

Under California Labor Code Section 2750.5, when a general contractor hires an uninsured subcontractor and that sub's worker is injured, the GC becomes the statutory employer. That is not a $25,000 bond problem — that is a six- or seven-figure liability. The GC's own workers' comp insurer pays the claim, then the GC's experience modification rate (EMR) goes up, driving premium increases for years.

With SB 291 taking effect January 1, 2026, the CSLB now imposes minimum fines of $10,000 per violation for sole owners and $20,000 for corporations operating without coverage. A valid workers' comp certificate is mandatory for license renewal or reinstatement.

WC Exempt Rates by Trade

Some trades have dramatically higher exemption rates, reflecting the dominance of solo operators. For reference, here is a guide to all 44 CSLB license classifications.

Three-quarters of B-2 (residential) licensees are solo operators filing WC exemptions. When SB 216 goes into full effect on January 1, 2028 — requiring all contractors to carry workers' comp regardless of employee count — these trades will see the largest cost impact.

Federal Enforcement Records: 6,934 Contractors Flagged

Cross-referencing the full CSLB database against OSHA, DOL, SAM.gov, and EPA ECHO reveals that 6,934 California-licensed contractors (2.8%) have at least one federal enforcement signal. For a full guide on what these signals mean, see our article on contractor red flags in federal databases.

Signals by Source

While 97.2% of contractors have clean federal records, the flagged 2.8% account for over $53 million in back wages, $66 million in OSHA penalties, and 19,339 safety citations. The risk is concentrated — not evenly distributed.

Signal Concentration

Most flagged contractors have a single signal. But a subset has accumulated alarming records:

245 contractors have enforcement records from both OSHA and the DOL — meaning they've been cited for both safety violations and wage theft. A single OSHA citation could be bad luck. OSHA plus DOL wage theft suggests a pattern.

An additional 381 active contractors have no workers' comp insurance and at least one federal violation signal. These represent the highest-risk pool: uninsured and already cited.

OSHA Deep Dive: Citation Rates by Trade, County, and Year

Raw citation counts tell an incomplete story. A trade with 10,000 licensees and 500 citations has a very different risk profile than a trade with 500 licensees and 500 citations. The analysis below normalizes OSHA signals per 1,000 licensed contractors in each trade. For an explanation of OSHA violation types and penalty amounts, see our OSHA Violation Types & Penalties guide.

Citation Rate by Trade (Per 1,000 Licensees)

The standout: nearly 80% of HAZ-classified contractors — those licensed to remove asbestos, lead paint, mold, and other toxic materials — have at least one OSHA citation on record. Given the inherent danger of the work and the strict regulatory framework around hazardous substance handling, a high inspection rate is expected. But it underscores why trades involving hazardous materials, asbestos abatement, and heavy civil work demand elevated vetting before you put them on a job site.

By comparison, B (General Building) — the most common license type with 104,167 active holders — has a rate of roughly 95 per 1,000. C10 (Electrical) sits at approximately 72 per 1,000. The high-risk trades have per-capita citation rates 5–10x higher than the general contractor population.

Citation Rate by County (Per 1,000 Contractors)

Los Angeles and San Diego have the highest raw OSHA signal counts. But when normalized for the number of licensed contractors in each county, the picture changes dramatically:

Shasta County tops the list at 354.1 per 1,000 — more than double the rate of major metro areas. Fresno follows at 329.7. Why do rural counties outpace LA and San Diego? Because this is a per-capita rate: citations divided by the number of licensed contractors in each county. Shasta and Fresno have smaller contractor pools but significant concentrations of heavy civil, logging, agricultural, and hazardous industrial work — exactly the kind of high-exposure trades that draw OSHA inspections. LA has the most citations by raw count (2,423), but its large contractor base dilutes the per-capita rate.

OSHA Violations by Type and Penalty

The 66 willful violations carry an average penalty of $54,626 each. Under current OSHA penalty schedules, a single willful violation can reach $165,514. Contractors with willful citations are candidates for OSHA's Severe Violator Enforcement Program, which triggers follow-up inspections at all of the employer's worksites.

Year-over-Year Trend: OSHA Signals Rising

After the COVID-19 dip in 2020, OSHA citations matched to California contractors have climbed every year. The 2025 figure — 1,520 signals — represents a 137% increase over 2020 and reflects the full calendar year as reported by OSHA as of February 2026. Whether this reflects increased enforcement activity, increased construction volume, or worsening compliance (likely all three), the trend is clear: citation risk is going up, not down.

For GCs, this means the Controlling Employer Doctrine is more relevant than ever. Under OSHA's multi-employer worksite policy, a general contractor can be cited for a subcontractor's safety violations if the GC had the ability to prevent or correct the hazard.

$53.6 Million in Back Wages: California's Contractor Wage Violation Problem

The Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) tracks employers found to owe workers back wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Davis-Bacon Act, and related statutes. For a detailed explanation of how these cases work, see our DOL Back Wage Orders guide.

Aggregate DOL Data

Repeat Offenders

Among the 2,603 DOL violation records, 146 cases are flagged as repeat violators — meaning the employer has been cited previously for the same type of violation. Repeat violators are responsible for a disproportionate share of the damage:

• 84 cases flagged as "Willful" repeat, accounting for $8.3 million in back wages.
• 48 cases flagged as "Repeated", accounting for $1.6 million in back wages.
• 14 cases flagged as both repeat and willful, accounting for $1.6 million in back wages.

Top Trades for Wage Violations (Matched to CA Contractors)

For GCs, subcontractor wage violations are not just the sub's problem. On prevailing wage projects, joint-employer liability can flow uphill to the general contractor. A sub's DOL back-wage judgment becomes the GC's legal exposure — and on public works, it can trigger debarment proceedings for the entire project team.

With Assembly Bill 1002 taking effect January 1, 2026, the California Attorney General can now file civil actions against licensed contractors for unpaid wages. This represents a significant expansion of enforcement tools beyond the traditional DOL and DLSE channels.

Cumulative Exposure: License Age, Business Structure, and Enforcement History

License Age and Cumulative Enforcement Exposure

Federal enforcement records accumulate over time. A contractor licensed for 30 years has had 30 years of OSHA inspections, DOL audits, and EPA enforcement exposure. A contractor licensed for two years has had two. The correlation below reflects this cumulative exposure — not that older firms are less compliant:

Important context: This data does not mean older contractors are less safe or less compliant. A 30-year contractor has had 10x the exposure window of a 3-year contractor. The practical takeaway for GCs: a clean record from a veteran firm carries more weight than a clean record from a new licensee, because the veteran has actually been through decades of potential enforcement. New licensees simply have not been around long enough to accumulate citations — or to demonstrate a sustained track record.

Entity Type vs. Violation Rate

Corporations are 6.7x more likely to have federal signals than sole owners. This does not mean corporations are less responsible — it reflects exposure surface. Corporations have employees and crews on job sites, creating more touchpoints for OSHA inspections, DOL audits, and environmental enforcement. A sole owner doing three kitchen remodels a year has almost zero chance of an OSHA inspection. A corporation running 40 commercial projects has inspectors showing up regularly. The rate difference is a function of scale, not compliance culture.

Market Snapshot

California's contractor market has grown significantly:

• 234,335 active licenses across all classifications.
• 214% growth in new licenses from 2015 (5,323) to 2025 (16,715).
• 48% sole owners, 45.4% corporations,4.9% LLCs, 1.6% partnerships.
• Median license age: 13 years. The surviving contractor pool is experienced.
• Top cities by active contractors: Los Angeles (6,407), San Diego (5,800), San Jose (4,926), Sacramento (4,010), San Francisco (3,801).

What General Contractors Should Do With This Data

The data reveals a construction market where the vast majority of contractors are compliant — but a meaningful minority is operating with gaps in insurance coverage, safety records, or wage compliance. For GCs, the question is not whether bad actors exist, but whether they're in your bid stack right now.

What a High-Risk Contractor Looks Like

To put the data in perspective, consider a composite profile drawn from real records in this dataset:

This contractor would pass a standard CSLB license check. Active license, proper classification, bond in place. Only a cross-reference against federal databases reveals the full picture.

What This Report Does Not Cover

This analysis is limited to publicly available federal enforcement databases. It does not include mechanics lien history, general liability insurance adequacy, bonding capacity, Dun & Bradstreet financial health, or active litigation — all of which matter in a full prequalification. Federal databases catch the most severe violations, but a comprehensive vetting process goes further.

The Five-Database Check

No single database tells the full story. CSLB confirms license status but does not check OSHA, DOL, or EPA records. OSHA tracks safety but not wage theft. DOL tracks wages but not environmental violations. A comprehensive vetting check requires all five:

1. CSLB license status — Active, current, with proper classification for the work. Verify the license verification steps.
2. Workers' comp verification — Confirm active policy (not lapsed), or verify that the exemption is legitimate.
3. SAM.gov exclusion check — Confirm no active federal debarment.
4. OSHA inspection history — Review for serious, willful, or repeat violations. Check penalty amounts and abatement status.
5. DOL wage violation check — Review for back wage orders, especially repeat violator flags.

Done manually, this process takes 45–90 minutes per contractor across five separate government websites — assuming you know where to look and how to cross-reference business names that may not match exactly between databases. For a more detailed prequalification process, see our Subcontractor Prequalification Checklist.

Methodology

This report was compiled by SiteVetter, which cross-references California Contractors State License Board (CSLB) data with enforcement records from four federal databases:

• CSLB License Master File — 245,883 contractor records including license status, classifications, workers' comp status, bond data, and personnel records. Data downloaded from the CSLB's weekly data export.
• OSHA Inspection Data — 99,058 inspection records with associated violations, penalties, and accident reports. Matched to California contractors using business name and address fuzzy matching with confidence scoring.
• DOL Wage and Hour Division — 2,603 construction-related violation records from the WHD enforcement database. Matched using business name normalization and address correlation.
• SAM.gov Exclusion Records — 139,248 federal exclusion records. Matched using trigram fuzzy matching on normalized business names with address verification.
• EPA ECHO — 17,647 environmental enforcement records. Matched to California contractors using business name and location correlation.

Federal data matching uses a tiered confidence system: exact name + exact zip code matches score 0.95 confidence, fuzzy name + exact zip scores 0.80–0.92, and name + city/state matches score 0.60–0.75 (flagged for manual review). Only matches above the 0.60 threshold are included in this report.

Note on workers' comp data: The 6,394 "lapsed" workers' comp figure reflects contractors whose WC policy expiration date in CSLB records has passed. In some cases, a contractor may have renewed their policy but the CSLB records have not yet been updated. We include these in the insurance gap count because, from a GC's vetting perspective, if a policy shows as expired at the time of verification, it is a red flag regardless of the reason — and the GC should request a current certificate of insurance before proceeding.

All data is current as of February 2026. CSLB data is refreshed weekly. Federal databases are refreshed on their respective publication schedules.

The SiteVetter California Contractor Compliance Report — 2026 Edition. For questions about the data or methodology, contact reports@sitevetter.com.