Mapping the Journey: Acquiring a Contractor's License

A question recently came up on Reed Construction Data’s Ask the Experts page: an electrical contractor licensed in Washington and Oregon wanted to know how to go about becoming licensed in Arizona. I was a little surprised at the question at first — if someone already has a couple of contractor's licenses, is acquiring a contractor's license from another state that difficult? Some digging confirmed the inquirer's frustration — navigating the requirements of a contractor’s license can provide numerous detours and dead ends — individual state requirements are literally all over the map.

Whether you are seeking a license in your own state or in another state, the starting point must be the appropriate state agency for contractor licensing. This might require a bit of research, as the names of the departments can vary wildly — the Arizona Registrar of Contractors, the Wisconsin Dept. of Commerce, Safety and Building Division and the South Carolina Dept. of Labor, Licensing and Regulation are examples of a few. A good resource online is www.contractors-license.org. The home page features a map of all fifty states in the U.S. You can click on any state to see if a contractor needs to be licensed in that state, and if so, what the requirements for licensing are. While I can't vouch for how often the site is updated (though it was a good sign that every link I clicked on worked), the site does provide those invaluable.... Read More>>>

Two cities illustrate divergence in regional economic growth

Las Vegas, Nevada and Bismarck, North Dakota are now at opposite ends of the metro economic performance scale as the economy turns from deep recession to recovery. Las Vegas may be the most recession ravaged city in the country while Bismarck is one of the few cities that survived the recession with almost no damage. A few years ago Las Vegas was booming and Bismarck’s economy was struggling to stay near average growth. How one city collapsed and another one prospered in difficult times is useful lesson in anticipating how your geographic market will fare, relative to the whole country, over the course of an economic cycle.

The differences in economic growth between metro areas over a business cycle are far larger than the differences in national economic growth at different points in time during a business cycle. National economic trends impact every metro area but local economic trends can often overwhelm national trends.

The economic character of every metro area is defined by the mix of products and services that are exported outside of the metro area. Every city has about the same number of people employed in food stores, laundries and local services per 1,000 people. But is the dominant auto industry gives Detroit its.... Read More>>>