California has more real estate agents than schoolteachers

California has 380,731 people with a real estate licence and 286,126 public school teachers. That is 94,605 more agents than teachers, or four agents for every three teachers.

Source: ProfessionLens, California has more real estate agents than schoolteachers, September 2026. Data: California DRE licensee list, September 2026; California Department of Education, 2024-25.

The count

The California Department of Real Estate publishes its full licensee list as a daily file. The copy we pulled in September 2026 has 289,907 salespersons and 90,824 brokers, 380,731 individuals. We left out the 24,196 corporate officers and 24,192 corporations on the same list, since they are not separate people selling houses.

The California Department of Education counted 286,126 classroom teachers, kindergarten through grade 12, in the state's public schools for 2024-25.

The first objection we expected: lots of those licences belong to people who stopped selling. The DRE list can answer part of that. 80,173 salespersons and 7,483 brokers carry the status "Licensed NBA", which means no broker affiliation. A California salesperson cannot close a deal without a broker, so those 80,173 are not working as agents right now. Take all 87,656 of them out and 293,075 licensees are left. That is still 6,949 more than the number of teachers.

What the list cannot tell us is how many of the 293,075 closed a deal this year. There is no public record of that.

More agents than homes sold

The California Association of Realtors projected 269,000 existing single-family homes sold in California in 2025. That count leaves out condos, so the real total of sales is higher. Even so, the state has 1.4 licensed agents for every single-family house that changed hands.

Texas is the obvious comparison, because its licence list is also public. The Texas Real Estate Commission shows 140,551 active sales agents and 33,385 active individual brokers, 173,936 together. Texas REALTORS reports 335,390 homes sold in 2025. That is 1.9 homes per active licensee a year. California manages 0.7. Most sales have an agent on each side, so the average Texas licensee works on about four sides a year and the average Californian on fewer than one and a half.

Source: ProfessionLens, September 2026. Data: California DRE, TREC, C.A.R., Texas REALTORS.

Where the numbers come from

• California licensees: DRE current licensee file (CurrList.csv), counted by licence type and status, September 2026.
• California teachers: California Department of Education, Certificated Staff Reports 2024-25, classroom-based K-12 teachers, Census Day October 2024.
• California home sales: C.A.R. 2026 California Housing Market Forecast, projected 2025 existing single-family sales. C.A.R. later reported 2025 sales up 0.9% on 2024; it did not give the unit total.
• Texas licensees: TREC licence holder file on data.texas.gov, status active, sales agents plus individual brokers, September 2026.
• Texas home sales: Texas REALTORS 2025 annual report, MLS-reported sales.

The counts and sources are in the dataset files linked below.