New 50-State Report on the Riskiest Trades to Insure for General Liability

New national analysis highlights the trades, claim patterns, and state conditions that make general liability coverage harder to place in today's market

BURBANK, Calif., Mar. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- USA Business Insurance Services, inc. announced the release of its new national report, Riskiest Trades to Insure in the U.S. for General Liability, a state-by-state analysis of the trades, sectors, and claim patterns that create the most pressure in today's general liability insurance market.

The report is based on a 10-year internal review by USA Business Insurance of policy calculations, class placement patterns, underwriting friction points, and real-world claim-trigger observations across all 50 states. That internal review was benchmarked against public liability data from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, along with carrier-backed materials from The Hartford, Travelers, Liberty Mutual, and Chubb.

Unlike broader business risk reports, this analysis focuses specifically on general liability. It does not rank businesses by workers' compensation, commercial auto, or professional liability hazards. Instead, it examines the claim activity that drives third-party bodily injury, third-party property damage, products-completed operations allegations, and related legal expense.

According to the report, some of the hardest contractor classes to place on the general liability side include roofing, welding, fire sprinkler installation, plumbing, electrical work, and appliance or HVAC installation. USA Business Insurance said these classes remain difficult because routine operations can quickly expand into finished-property damage, customer injury, or delayed completed-operations claims.

"The real pressure point in general liability is not simply danger to the worker," the company said in the report. "It is how quickly normal operations can create a third-party loss that spreads into finished-property damage, public injury, completed-operations allegations, and legal expense."

The report argues that many business owners misunderstand what makes a class difficult to insure. The riskiest general liability accounts are not always the ones tied to the most visibly hazardous work. In many cases, they are the businesses where normal day-to-day operations can trigger larger third-party losses involving property damage, customer injury, product allegations, or multi-party disputes after the job is done.

In construction and installation, the report identifies roofing, hot work, fire sprinkler contracting, plumbing, electrical work, and general contracting as major high-pressure areas. According to USA Business Insurance, these classes combine some of the hardest general liability triggers in one place: occupied property, water release, fire potential, subcontractor complexity, and losses that may not fully emerge until after the work is complete.

The report also draws on carrier risk-control guidance to support that analysis. Travelers' hot-work materials emphasize combustible controls, active fire watch, and post-work monitoring, while construction loss-control content points to water damage as one of the most common sources of building project losses. USA Business Insurance said those two themes — fire and water — continue to account for a large share of difficult contractor liability claims.

Roofing remains particularly challenging because the costliest part of many claims is not the roof itself, but the interior property beneath it, including drywall, insulation, flooring, inventory, electronics, and tenant improvements. Welding and other hot-work classes remain difficult because a small spark or heat condition can develop into a larger property loss after visible work appears complete. Fire sprinkler installation, although safety-oriented by nature, can still generate severe water-damage claims when testing, fittings, valves, or hidden leaks affect finished property.

The report also highlights installation work that many owners see as routine, including appliance installation, HVAC work, plumbing, and electrical work. Those businesses often operate inside finished, occupied homes and commercial spaces, where even a modest error can lead to a costly property damage claim.

USA Business Insurance said the same severity pattern extends outside construction. In manufacturing and retail, liability can escalate quickly because of product allegations and customer-facing exposures. The report notes that manufacturers, distributors, importers, and retailers can all become part of the same claim when an allegation involves design defects, manufacturing defects, or inadequate instructions or warnings.

For retailers, the report points to two main drivers: customer foot traffic and product exposure. It cites The Hartford's small-business claims analysis, which places slip, fall, and customer injury among the most common claims and estimates average severity at about $45,000. It also references Liberty Mutual's observation that a single slip-and-fall or property damage event can become expensive quickly in a market influenced by medical inflation and higher verdict pressure.

The report identifies furniture stores, appliance retailers, grocery and convenience operations, and home-goods or showroom businesses as retail subclasses that may draw more general liability scrutiny than many owners expect.

At the state level, the report identifies Nevada, Arkansas, Hawaii, New Hampshire, and Georgia as major outliers based on broad liability pressure, with Washington, South Carolina, Connecticut, New Mexico, and Texas also showing notable strain. USA Business Insurance said state difficulty is often misunderstood as only a litigation issue, when it can also reflect repair costs, labor costs, property values, business density, and the local mix of contractors, retailers, and public-facing businesses.

The report's claim-severity section leans on The Hartford's 2025 review of small-business property and liability claims from 2020 through 2024. According to those figures, fire remains the costliest common claim type at about $80,000 on average, followed by slip, fall, and customer injury at about $45,000. Water and freezing damage, along with product liability, average about $35,000.

USA Business Insurance said those figures matter because they line up closely with the same loss patterns driving underwriting pressure across multiple sectors. Fire affects hot work, roofing, and some electrical classes. Water affects plumbing, sprinkler, appliance, and HVAC work. Slip-and-fall affects retail and service businesses. Product liability affects manufacturers and retailers selling physical goods.

The report also addresses the small-business insurance protection gap. While no single public dataset gives a precise national general-liability-only insured-versus-uninsured rate for established businesses, USA Business Insurance cites carrier-backed indicators showing that many small businesses remain either uninsured or underinsured. The company said that gap often appears when a business takes on larger commercial work, adds subcontractors, changes product lines, moves into more finished occupied environments, or continues operating with older limits and structures that no longer match the exposure.

The full report is available on the USA Business Insurance blog and includes trade analysis, state tables, carrier-backed claim benchmarks, protection-gap statistics, and charts designed to help business owners better understand what makes a class harder to insure on the general liability side.

Read the full report at: https://www.businessinsuranceusa.com/blog/insurance/riskiest-trades-to-insure-in-us-general-liability/ 

About USA Business Insurance Services, inc.
USA Business Insurance Services, inc. works with contractors, retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, restaurants, and service businesses in all 50 states. The company helps business owners evaluate real-world liability exposures, structure practical insurance programs, and present hard-to-place risks more clearly to the insurance market. Through its educational content and industry-focused guidance, USA Business Insurance provides practical insight into how commercial insurance works in the real world for small and midsize businesses.

SOURCE USA Business Insurance Services, Inc.