Texas Journeyman PrepGetting licensed in Texas

Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

The hours only count if you were licensed while you worked them

Four words in the middle of a one-sentence statute decide whether four years of work counts. They are not in the journeyman electrician section and most summaries drop them.

On this page
  1. The requirement, and the clause in the middle of it
  2. What that clause costs, in money and in attention
  3. There is no early sitting on this license
  4. The scope is a list of sites
  5. The exemption it sits beside
  6. The decision, made concrete
  7. The examination, and the lowest pass rate TDLR published
  8. Fee, renewal and continuing education
  9. What this page cites

The requirement, and the clause in the middle of it

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1601 asks for at least 8,000 hours of on-the-job training as a licensed electrical apprentice under the supervision of a master electrician, and a passing score on the journeyman industrial electrician examination.

As a licensed electrical apprentice. That is the clause.

Set it against Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155, which creates the journeyman electrician license. Same 8,000 hours, same master electrician doing the supervising, and nothing at all about what license the applicant holds while the hours accumulate. Here, holding one is part of the requirement rather than a separate administrative step.

So the hours are not simply time worked. They are time worked in a particular licensed status, and if you spent two of those years working without an apprentice license, the section is worth reading in full before you file.

What that clause costs, in money and in attention

The apprentice license itself is cheap. Twenty dollars to apply at 16 TAC 73.80(a)(10), twenty a year to renew at 16 TAC 73.80(b)(10).

The attention is the expensive part. An apprentice license runs one year from issuance and renews annually (16 TAC 73.22(a)), and it carries four hours of continuing education each year unless you enroll in a department-registered apprenticeship training program instead (16 TAC 73.25(b) and (c)). Four years of hours means four renewals that all have to have happened.

That makes the date your apprentice license was first issued a date worth knowing to the day, because it is the earliest date from which hours can carry this clause.

Applicants for this license are among the types who must document their on-the-job training with the application (16 TAC 73.20(a)(1)), and there is one year from the date of filing to complete every requirement (16 TAC 73.20(b)).

There is no early sitting on this license

Worth saying plainly, because a rule change in 2026 created one next door.

From 1 July 2026 an applicant can sit for an examination at 7,000 hours rather than 8,000 (16 TAC 73.21(b)). The adopted amendment describes that as a route to the journeyman electrician examination and names no other license.

For this license, 8,000 is both the number that gets you into the chair and the number that gets you the license, and the two are the same number for the plain reason that the statute only states one.

The scope is a list of sites

Journeyman industrial electrician means an individual who engages in electrical work exclusively at a business that operates a chemical plant, petrochemical plant, refinery, natural gas plant, natural gas treating plant, pipeline, or oil and gas exploration and production operation.

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.002

That is subdivision (11-b), which is worth writing down because Chapter 1305 inserts definitions without moving the ones behind them and this license landed between Executive director at (11-a) and Journeyman lineman at (12).

Exclusively is the operative word. The license does not authorize work outside those site types, so it does not follow you to a commercial building, a hospital, or a data center, and no amount of time held widens it.

The exemption it sits beside

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.003(a)(14) already lifts the act off electrical work at those same site types. Branch (A) covers a person who works solely for and is employed by the business operating the plant.

Branch (B) is a separate route for someone working under a contract of at least twelve months' duration at a shorter list of those plants, with two conditions attached to it that are easy to misread as cumulative.

The consequence is unusual. A great many people doing this work every day need no license at all, so this one is not permission to work. It is a credential for people who already have permission.

The decision, made concrete

If the exemption covers you today and you expect to stay on that site, the license buys optionality rather than access.

If you might move to work that is not on the list, this license does not come with you, because its scope is drawn around the same list the exemption is. The journeyman electrician license is the one that travels, and it wants the same 8,000 hours under the same master electrician without the apprentice-license condition.

Which means the decision is best made at the start of the count rather than at the end of it. The two licenses want the same work supervised by the same person, and only one of them cares what was in your wallet while you did it.

The examination, and the lowest pass rate TDLR published

The PSI candidate information bulletin revised 9 July 2026 puts this exam at 60 scored items with 5 unscored, 180 minutes, and 70 percent to pass, for $64 paid to PSI. That is the same shape as the maintenance electrician paper.

TDLR recorded 8 passes from 51 tests in fiscal 2025, a rate of 15.69 percent, with 4 more candidates who did not appear. It is the lowest rate of the twelve rows on that table, below Master Calculations at 19.08 percent, which is the exam the market normally calls the hardest in the program.

Now the other half, because the first half on its own is misleading. Fifty-one tests is a small sample. Two more passes out of those same 51 would have put the rate at 19.61 percent and moved this license off the bottom of the table entirely. The honest reading is that the paper is not easy and that the number is not a stable ranking, and anyone quoting 15.69 percent as the hardest exam in Texas is quoting a figure built on eight people.

Fee, renewal and continuing education

The application fee is thirty dollars, at 16 TAC 73.80(a)(15). That is the last line of the fee schedule, after the apprentice training program registration, because the license arrived in 2017 and was added to the end of a list written in 2004.

Thirty to renew, at 16 TAC 73.80(b)(14). The paragraph numbers differ between the two subsections because the renewal list has no line for the program registration, so a citation copied from one to the other lands on the wrong license.

Like everything else in this chapter it carries a one year term from its issue date and an annual renewal (16 TAC 73.22(a)), and four hours of continuing education attach to each of those renewals (16 TAC 73.25(b)).

What this page cites

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Built and maintained by Jeff Clerisier, Trojan Digital Marketing.

Every rule here is cited to the section it comes from, and corrections are logged in public with the date. This is study material rather than electrical advice, and it does not replace your own code book or your inspector.