California Workers' Comp Report
Analysis of 183,727 CLEAR CSLB contractor licenses · data as of September 4, 2026
Download the county-level data (CSV) - free to cite with attribution and a link (license: CC BY 4.0).
92,586 of 183,727 CLEAR CSLB contractor licenses (50.4%) carry a workers' compensation policy the register names, and 2,343 of those policies (2.5%) show an expiration date already past in the state's own file. The other half of the register is not simply "uninsured": California lets a contractor with no employees file an exemption instead of a policy, and CSLB's file marks those rows with its own exemption vocabulary rather than a carrier. This study counts what the register NAMES - policies and their dates - and does not guess at the exempt remainder.
Workers' comp is mandatory regardless of employees for two classifications - C-20 (HVAC) and C-39 (roofing) - which is why our California listings show the coverage column with that exact caveat.
One carrier holds a quarter of the market
Among the 92,586 licenses with a named policy, 264 distinct carriers appear - but State Compensation Insurance Fund alone holds 23,759 of them (25.7%). The State Fund is California's insurer of last resort, so its share is itself a signal: it is where contractors land when the private market will not quote them.
| Carrier | Policies | Share of insured |
|---|---|---|
| State Compensation Insurance Fund | 23,759 | 25.7% |
| PIE Insurance Company (The) | 4,831 | 5.2% |
| Insurance Company Of The West | 4,303 | 4.6% |
| Technology Insurance Company Inc | 3,815 | 4.1% |
| Hartford Casualty Insurance Company | 3,517 | 3.8% |
| Employers Preferred Insurance Company | 2,922 | 3.2% |
| Norguard Insurance Company | 2,866 | 3.1% |
| Everest Premier Insurance Company | 2,781 | 3.0% |
Where expired policies cluster
Expired-policy counts by county, against each county's CLEAR licenses. The rate is computed over ALL licenses in the county, so counties with many exempt filings show low percentages by construction - the CSV carries the raw counts for your own cuts.
| County | CLEAR licenses | Expired policies | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles | 38,690 | 511 | 1.3% |
| San Diego | 17,035 | 221 | 1.3% |
| Orange | 15,477 | 191 | 1.2% |
| Riverside | 12,524 | 176 | 1.4% |
| San Bernardino | 8,419 | 124 | 1.5% |
| Santa Clara | 8,019 | 115 | 1.4% |
| Sacramento | 7,979 | 91 | 1.1% |
| Contra Costa | 6,080 | 73 | 1.2% |
| Alameda | 6,021 | 86 | 1.4% |
| Ventura | 5,070 | 66 | 1.3% |
| Sonoma | 4,426 | 50 | 1.1% |
| San Mateo | 3,889 | 40 | 1.0% |
| Placer | 3,774 | 43 | 1.1% |
| Fresno | 3,285 | 50 | 1.5% |
| San Francisco | 3,165 | 30 | 0.9% |
Method and reuse
Source: CSLB's public Master License Data file, ingested in full and analyzed as of September 4, 2026. Only CLEAR licenses are counted. A "named policy" is a row whose workers' comp coverage type the register itself marks as insured ("Workers' Compensation Insurance" or "Self-Insured"); exempt filings carry no carrier and are counted in the no-policy column, never guessed at. "Expired" means the policy's expiration date in the file is earlier than the file's own data date. Figures recompute on each re-ingest and may differ slightly from an earlier citation.
Cite or republish freely with attribution to Homversa and a link to this page. City-level cuts are available on request at hello@homversa.com.