The licensing path, page by page

In the order you meet it, from apprentice to master.

How this is organized

Each requirement below is cited to the statute or rule it comes from. Where sources contradict each other, the page says so.

ApplyingYou apply before you test, not after
The order is fixed by rule, there are two separate fees to two separate organizations, and a one year clock starts…
Apprentice licenseTexas licenses apprentices. It is not a registration.
Other states register apprentices. Texas licenses them, which is why the word apprentice keeps turning up in a list…
Hours requiredThe two numbers are both real
One is when you may sit the exam. The other is when you may hold the license. Nearly every site quoting a single…
The JEEP routeThe program credits half the hours the license requires
The credit is real and the arithmetic at the end of it is the part worth doing before anybody enrolls.
License typesFourteen Texas electrical licenses, and the two that people confuse
TDLR issues fourteen electrical licenses. Four of them account for almost all the exam volume, five barely…

Emergency licenseNinety days, after a declared disaster, for electricians licensed elsewhere
Texas has hurricanes, ice storms and floods, and this is the provision that lets help arrive legally.
Industrial electricianThe 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 linemanThe 7,000 hours on this license are not on-the-job training
Two licenses in Texas carry a 7,000 hour figure and they count completely different things. Reading across from one…
Maintenance electricianThe license that only lets you put back what was already there
The hours are the easy part. What decides whether this license is any use to you is a rule saying a replacement has…
Residential wiremanThe lowest hour requirement in the chapter, and a ceiling at four stories
Half the hours of a journeyman, a scope drawn around one kind of building, and since 2023 a second way in that…

Contractor licenseThe contractor license names a master, and the master can be named only once
Three of the fourteen Texas electrical licenses attach to a business rather than to a person. This is the big one…
InsuranceThe insurance figures are in a rule, not in the act
People quote these numbers as statute. They are not statute, and the difference matters because a rule changes…
Using your licenseThe license belongs to a person, not to a business or a job
Short rules with no wiggle room in them, and the consequences attach to both people in the arrangement.
Truck and advertisingThe business name goes on the door as well, not just the license number
These are small rules with specific numbers in them, which makes them easy to enforce and easy to fail. The two…

Criminal historyYou can find out where you stand before you spend anything
The useful fact here is procedural rather than legal. There is a way to ask the question first, it costs ten…
Documenting hoursBoth halves of the definition have to hold, or the hour is not an hour
The hours are the longest part of getting licensed and the part that depends most on somebody else doing something.
EnforcementFive thousand dollars a day, and a Class C misdemeanor
Two tracks run in parallel here: an administrative one that reaches anybody, and a criminal one with a short list…
Who is exemptTwenty-three kinds of work the licensing act does not reach
The exemptions are the least-read part of the act and the most likely to decide whether you personally need a…
City rulesA city cannot make you re-examine, and cannot charge you a license fee
Cities keep real power over electrical work in Texas. Three specific things have been taken away from them, and the…
SupervisionTexas has no apprentice ratio, and no term called direct supervision
Two of the most confidently repeated facts about Texas supervision are things the rules do not say.

Continuing educationTexas electrician continuing education, exactly as the rule is written
Four hours, every year, in three subjects, from a provider TDLR has registered. The rule does not say how the four…
FeesWhat each license costs, from the rule that sets it
These are small numbers and they are published in rule rather than on a fee page, which is why they go stale in…
Military and spousesA military spouse can work in Texas without a Texas license
There are two separate schemes here, the second one is much stronger than most people expect, and it was rewritten…
Coming from another stateTexas has agreements with ten states for journeyman and six for master
The roster below came off TDLR's own page on 24 August 2026. The department has announced four new agreements since…
Renewal and lapseEighteen months is the line, and past it renewal is somebody else's decision
The annual term catches people who came from a state with a two or three year license. What comes after the term…

Readiness checkThree questions, then the list of what your application actually needs
30 situations across the three ways people arrive at a Texas electrical license, built from 61 rules with a…
Edition and renewalNothing about your license changes on September 1. Your next course does.
The code edition Texas enforces changes on 1 September 2026. Your license term and your renewal date do not, which…