Unlicensed job ceiling

Definition

The job size under which no contractor license is needed, and what breaks the exemption.

Why It Matters

California raised its figure to one thousand dollars on the first day of 2026, so the five hundred dollars everyone still quotes is stale. The ceiling covers the whole contract, labor and materials and everything else, and applies only where the work is casual, minor or inconsequential and needs no building permit. Two things break it regardless of price: advertising as a contractor, and employing anybody to help. Florida sets its casual-work line at two thousand five hundred dollars, and goes further in the other direction by barring a local government from requiring any license for painting at all, which is the clearest statement in the country that this trade is deregulated.