Methodology

Every cell carries its method

A fact without its provenance is not checkable. Each cell states how it was established:

Statute

Read from the enacted text, cited with its amendment and effective date. The strongest tier: the law itself rather than a description of it.

Agency page

Read from the agency's own published page. Authoritative about practice — and capable of lagging the law. We found one regulator publishing a threshold that a statute had superseded nineteen months earlier, which is why this is a separate and weaker tier than a statute. 6 of 51 regimes.

Two-source concordance

Two independent secondary sources agree, and no primary has been read. 44 of 51 regimes. This is real evidence and weaker than a primary; it is named rather than hidden so a reader can weigh it.

Unverified

Sources disagreed, or the cell has not been researched. Stated explicitly. An unverified cell is never omitted, because an omission reads as "not applicable" rather than "not checked".

Why the categories are three, not two

Two independent sources agreed on 44 states and disagreed on 7. The disagreement was not noise: those 7 register contractors without examining competency, which is a third category. Presenting a registration as a licence would overstate what the state verified.

What a negative finding means

"This state does not license general contractors" is an assertion, so it was checked against primaries rather than trusted to concordance. It also does not mean no licence exists: specialty trades are licensed almost everywhere. The honest statement is that the state licenses electricians and plumbers but not general contractors.

Survey date

The regime survey was conducted 2026-08-11. Regimes change by legislation, not by the day; each page carries the date its facts were established.