Research

Roofing research from HyreRoof

Grouped by topic: the law on who may roof, then housing, prices, the workforce and safety, then how the desk works.

Updated September 2026

Written by HyreRoof Research Desk Primary-source research and fact checking

What you will find here

HyreRoof publishes 11 original roofing studies, each built from primary records. They cover who may roof (licensing by state and city, insurance, storm-season laws), what the code requires, what roofing costs over time, how many roofers there are and how dangerous the work is.

Every figure carries its source and retrieval date, and gaps are published as gaps.

Who may roof your house, and what the law requires of them

Licensing by state and by city, contractor insurance, the laws written for storm season, and Florida’s market.

6 regimes Is roofing even licensed where you live? Roofing is regulated six different ways in the US, so “licensed or not” is the wrong question. Eight states checked at the statute and the licensing board. Read the study 10 programs The cities that license roofers when the state will not Ten city programs in Colorado and Texas, read at their own codes. They run from an ICC exam plus $1m of cover to a $120 fee and a mailing address. Read the study 4 instruments Does your roofer have to be insured? Liability cover, workers’ compensation, a bond and a certificate are four separate things sold as one phrase. Eight jurisdictions checked, including places that require none. Read the study 9 states The laws written for roofers who follow storms Cancellation rights, deductible rules and bans on contractors adjusting claims, read at the statute with effective dates in nine states. Read the study 9,402 Inside the Florida roofing market Six roof and claim law changes since 2021, read at the statute, and 9,402 state roofing license records mapped by county and tier. Read the study

Housing age, prices, the workforce and the code

How old the housing is, what has happened to roofing prices and wages, how many roofers there are, how dangerous the work is, and what the ice barrier rule says.

100 cities America’s oldest housing stock, city by city The hundred largest cities ranked on the Census median year built, with margins of error. Housing age is a weak proxy for roof age, and the page says so first. Read the study 8.3M Homes entering the roof replacement window A cohort model over Census year-built data, run at 20, 25 and 30-year assumptions and checked against the 8.3 million roofing projects the American Housing Survey counted. Read the study +254.8% What happened to the price of a roof Asphalt roofing materials rose 254.8% from 2000 to 2025, roofing wages 108.9% and consumer prices 86.9%, from federal price series. Read the study 12 to 1 Is there really a roofer shortage? Employed roofers per housing unit for 50 large metros and every state, from BLS and Census counts. The spread between places is 12 to 1. Read the study 48.7 The roofing fatality atlas Roofers died at 48.7 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers in 2024, about fifteen times the all-worker rate, with a year of OSHA citations and OSHA severe injury reports since 2015. Read the study 24 in The ice barrier line The code draws no national line. It leaves a YES/NO cell to each jurisdiction. The code text, seven published determinations and 62 NOAA stations. Read the study

How the research is made

The method behind every study, the datasets they use, and how to cite them.

Method Research methodology How the desk sources, dates and checks a figure, and what it will not publish. Open the page Data Data and sources What each study is built from, at what level of geography, and how to cite it. Open the page Press For journalists How to cite a study, how to report an error, and how to reach the research desk. Open the page

How we make every study checkable

Five rules every study on this page follows.

We read the primary source ourselves.

The statute rather than a summary of it, the licensing board rather than a directory that copied it, the federal dataset rather than an article about it.

Every figure has a retrieval date.

Statutes are amended and datasets revised. A figure without the date it was read cannot be checked, so every study says when.

Facts, our math and our opinion are labeled.

A source’s own words are quoted. A figure we worked out is marked “HyreRoof calculation”. An interpretation is marked “HyreRoof analysis”.

Gaps are published as gaps.

Where a source blocked retrieval or could not be verified, the study says so and leaves the cell empty rather than filling it from a secondary summary.

We are not the contractor.

HyreRoof does not repair, replace, inspect or warrant roofs, rates no company, and publishes nothing here as legal, insurance or engineering advice.

Questions

Who writes HyreRoof research?

The HyreRoof Research Desk. Research is credited to the desk rather than a named person, because it is organizational work, and we do not invent authors or credentials.

What counts as a source on these pages?

A primary document wherever one exists: the statute, the licensing board, the federal dataset. Every claim carries its retrieval date. Where our analysis goes beyond a source, the page says which is which; where a source could not be reached, it says that too.

Why are planned studies not listed here?

Because this page lists a study only once it exists. Two planned studies, on roof age and insurance rules and on hail exposure by county, depend on datasets we have not yet confirmed we can retrieve, so they stay unwritten.

Where is the full editorial policy?

On the editorial policy page, at /editorial-policy/. It covers sourcing, what we will not publish, how we expect to make money, and how corrections work.

Written and audited by

HyreRoof Research Desk

Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking

We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the statute, the licensing board’s own pages, the code section or the federal dataset ourselves, and every figure we publish carries the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.

Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify.

On our first study that rule removed a Minnesota exam statistic and left two states blank. Those gaps are on the page, not in a file somewhere.

155: primary sources read and cited
53: government domains among them
181: citations carrying a retrieval date
11: research studies published

How this desk works

Primary sources only. Statutes from the legislature’s own publishing system, licensing rules from the board that issues the license, datasets from the agency that collected them. Never a directory, an aggregator or another guide.
Three states, not two. A requirement is recorded as verified present, verified absent, or not verified. Folding the third into the second would turn an unchecked cell into a factual claim.
Retrieval dates on everything. Regulation changes. A citation without the date it was read is not a citation.
Failures are published. When a source blocks automated retrieval we record the failure and leave the row empty, rather than filling it from a secondary summary.
Authorship is organizational. Research is attributed to this desk, never to an invented expert. Outside commentary, where used, is attributed to named and verifiable people.

Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.

Sources & retrieval dates

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment, wages, fatality and price series. Retrieved September 18, 2026.

U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey and American Housing Survey. Retrieved September 18, 2026.

NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, 1991–2020 US Climate Normals, monthly station files. Retrieved September 3, 2026.

Have a roof in front of you?

The studies describe the rules and the numbers across the country. For a decision about one roof, the calculators do the arithmetic, and when you are ready, tell us about the project.

Find a Roofer Roof cost calculator

HyreRoof is an independent information site. It does not repair, replace, inspect or warrant roofs, and nothing in this research is legal, insurance or engineering advice.