Journeyman Electrician License

Becoming a Journeyman Electrician runs through a state licensing board, not a single national test, so the exact hours, fees, and exam provider vary by state. Using Texas as a representative example, the same approach this site uses for the Adjuster License, the path requires 8,000 hours of on-the-job training under a licensed Master Electrician (7,000 hours is enough to become eligible to sit the exam itself), documented on a formal Experience Verification Form signed by each supervising Master Electrician along the way.

Texas contracts the actual testing out to PSI, a third-party vendor, and the exam is open book in a specific, narrow sense: candidates bring their own soft-bound National Electrical Code (NEC) book of the current edition (loose-leaf or spiral-bound copies aren't allowed), not any reference material they'd like. As of March 2025, the exam splits into two separate parts, a knowledge portion and a calculations portion, which matters because knowing roughly where something sits in the code doesn't help much if the calculations portion requires actually doing the math correctly under time pressure.

Until that license is earned, an apprentice works under direct supervision the whole time. A Journeyman Electrician license is what legally allows someone to work unsupervised, which is also why most states treat the underlying hours and documentation seriously rather than as a formality. Faulty electrical work is a leading cause of structure fires and electrocution, and licensure exists specifically to verify a baseline of code knowledge before someone works without oversight.

None of this is uniform nationwide. States adopt NEC editions on their own schedules, so the correct edition to study depends on exactly which state and testing window a candidate is in, and license reciprocity between states varies too, some have formal agreements, others require an entirely new application or retest. OSHA 10 or 30 sits alongside all of this as a separate, state-by-state requirement, not journeyman licensing itself, mandatory on public construction projects in several states but not a nationwide legal requirement for electricians generally.

Fees are modest relative to the credential's weight: Texas charges a $30 non-refundable application fee, with separate exam fees set by the testing vendor's own fee schedule. That low cost reflects how much of the real barrier here is the years of documented hours, not the exam fee itself.

The practice questions below are original, testing the real licensing process and NEC-related judgment this exam requires, not copied from any state's actual exam questions, which vary state to state and aren't publicly reproducible regardless. For the full picture of the career this credential unlocks, see Electrician.