Texas Journeyman PrepGetting licensed in Texas

Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

The press release names Ohio. The roster page does not, and carries no date.

One agency, two documents, and only one of them says Ohio counts. Here is what the gap is and what it means for anyone holding an Ohio master license.

On this page
  1. What each document says
  2. The roster, as it read on 24 August 2026
  3. Most of this is a house rule, and the journeyman half is all house rule
  4. What can be dated here, and what cannot
  5. Why a roster can lag a press release
  6. What to do if the Ohio license is yours
  7. How to read any roster, this one included
  8. What this page cites

What each document says

TDLR announced a master-level agreement with Ohio on 5 June 2026. As of 24 August 2026 the department page that lists which states Texas recognizes does not name Ohio anywhere on it.

Both are published by the same agency on the same domain. The press release carries a date and is the one saying an agreement exists. The roster page carries no revision date at all, so there is no way to tell from the page itself whether somebody reviewed it after 5 June and left it alone, or whether nobody has touched it since before then.

That does not make the roster wrong. It makes both of them evidence rather than authority, which is a different thing and changes what you should do with them.

The roster, as it read on 24 August 2026

Six states appear at master level: Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska and North Carolina.

Almost everything the page asks of a master applicant is the same for all six. Four conditions sit above the state list, and they apply to every entry under it.

The 12,000 hours is the single largest gate on master reciprocity and it is the item most often dropped from secondhand summaries, this page’s own earlier version included. Twelve thousand hours is somewhere around six years of full-time work. It is also a separate test from the two years of holding a journeyman license, measured differently, so somebody can satisfy one of them and be nowhere near the other.

The letter of good standing is universal too, rather than a quirk of particular states. Every master entry on the page asks for one, and the footnote tells you to contact the state where you are licensed and request it, and says the letter has to show that you passed the statewide examination for electrical work. A sample letter is linked from the page and is worth handing to whoever writes yours.

What is genuinely specific to a state is short: the kind of license the entry will accept, plus one residency condition.

Master-level stateThe license the page namesJourneyman license held
AlabamaNo license type in the state list, but the Alabama document list asks for a Class A licenseOne year
ArkansasMaster electricianTwo years
IowaClass A master electrician, and the page says a Class B will not reciprocateOne year
LouisianaState contractor’s license, plus Louisiana residencyTwo years
NebraskaMaster electrician, and see the caution below on whether an unlimited electrical contractor license also countsOne year
North CarolinaMaster electrician or unlimited electrical contractorTwo years

Two cautions on that table. The roster prints the phrase "master electrician or unlimited electrical contractor" once, and on two separate reads of the page on 24 August 2026 it resolved differently: once as attaching to North Carolina alone, once as attaching to the Nebraska and North Carolina pair. That is a punctuation question with a forty-five dollar non-refundable answer behind it, so the table takes the narrow reading for Nebraska and leaves the wider one to the department. And Alabama carries no license type in the state list at all, while the Alabama document list asks for a copy of your state-issued Class A license. On either point, ask before you file.

Ten states appear at journeyman level: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Put the two lists side by side and they only partly overlap. Four states sit on both. Six appear at journeyman level and nowhere else. Louisiana and North Carolina appear at master level and nowhere else, so an electrician holding a North Carolina journeyman license gets nothing from the page even though North Carolina is on it.

Most of this is a house rule, and the journeyman half is all house rule

The common mistake in secondhand summaries of this page is to reprint the state names and drop the conditions. The conditions are where the work is, and at journeyman level they do not vary by state at all. TDLR applies the same three to all ten.

The document list is the same for every one of the ten as well: the reciprocity application form, a thirty dollar fee, and a copy of your state-issued license. Nothing is written for one state and not another.

The paperwork also runs the other way at journeyman level. The department says it will contact the state licensing authority itself, to certify that you passed the statewide examination for electrical work in that state, that you are licensed as a journeyman electrician, and that your license is in good standing. That is the department chasing the confirmation rather than you, which is the reverse of the master-level arrangement, where the letter of good standing is on the applicant.

At master level the four conditions listed earlier are uniform as well, with one footnoted exception. Two years of holding a journeyman license is the general rule; Alabama, Iowa and Nebraska are the three named exceptions at one year. That is one rule with a footnote, not six state rules.

So the genuinely per-state part of the whole page comes down to which license each entry will accept, and the Louisiana residency condition. A Louisiana license held by somebody who moved to Houston last year does not qualify under the Louisiana entry. An Iowa Class B does not qualify under the Iowa entry, whatever else the holder has done. Everything else on the page is the same for everybody.

What can be dated here, and what cannot

Four announcement dates are firm, and all four were read off the department’s own electrician news index on 24 August 2026. Arkansas was announced on 30 December 2025, Iowa on 6 February 2026, Alabama on 20 March 2026 and Ohio on 5 June 2026. Each item’s own address carries the same date, and we have read the Ohio release in full.

Iowa comes with a wrinkle worth naming, because it is exactly the kind of thing that gets averaged into a wrong answer. The news index posts the Iowa item on the 6th of February. The press release document behind that item is filed under a 5 February file name. Both are real. Cite the index and the date is the 6th, cite the document and it is the 5th, and the only mistake available is to quote one date against the other source.

What none of the four tells you is when the roster changed. Arkansas, Iowa and Alabama are on it today and Ohio is not, but the page carries no revision date and nothing behind it, so how long any of the three waited is not recoverable from the page. Anyone who tells you Ohio is late by comparison with Iowa is working from a dated record of when Iowa was added, and we have not found one.

What the pattern does support is the modest version of the claim. The roster moves without announcing that it has, so the only way to know where it stands is to look at it again.

Why a roster can lag a press release

Because the roster is not law and never was. Under Tex. Occ. Code 1305.164 the executive director may issue a license to an applicant licensed elsewhere where the director determines the applicant is licensed in a state Texas holds an agreement with, and 16 TAC 73.24 sets out the process without naming a single state anywhere in it.

So an agreement is made and unmade administratively. Nothing has to be published in the Texas Register, no comment period runs, and no effective date attaches to it. The list of states is a page somebody maintains by hand, and a page maintained by hand moves when someone edits it.

If the roster lived in the rule instead, adding Ohio would leave a dated, numbered public trail, and this article would not exist.

What to do if the Ohio license is yours

Ask the department in writing which of its two documents governs your application, and keep the reply. That is a two-line email and it converts a contradiction into a record with a date on it.

Do not pay first and sort it out afterward. Every fee in 16 TAC 73.80 is non-refundable, so an application filed against a roster that does not name your state costs you the money whether the department ends up agreeing with the press release or not.

The release sets out its own conditions and they are worth reading before you ask. What it treats as equivalent is a Texas master electrician license on one side and an Ohio master electrical contractor license on the other, which is not a pairing the names would suggest. It asks for the license to have been held in good standing for at least one year, and for it to have been obtained by passing that state’s own administered examination rather than a municipal one. And it says in terms that each state’s remaining prerequisites still apply, naming journeyman licensure and the Ohio business law examination among them.

That last clause is the one people skip. An agreement removes a barrier. It does not remove the rest of the file, and on the roster page the rest of the file has a specific content: the examination, the year holding the reciprocal license, the 12,000 hours under a master electrician, the journeyman years, and the letter.

How to read any roster, this one included

Write down the date you read it. A roster with no date on the page is a roster with the date you saw it, and nothing more.

Check the level before the state name, because the master list and the journeyman list are genuinely different lists.

Check how you got the license you hold. Every entry on the page turns on a statewide examination, at both levels, so an electrician licensed by a city rather than a state can be looking at the right state name and still be outside the agreement.

And check again on the morning you file. A hand-maintained page with no revision date, in a period when the department has been adding states to it, is not something a third party page can track on your behalf. This one included.

What this page cites

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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.