Texas Master Electrician License Requirements

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.153 asks for three separate things, and the one most often quoted on its own is the hours.

Hours do not satisfy the two years and the two years do not satisfy the hours. Somebody who logged 12,000 hours in three years as a journeyman has both. Somebody who logged them faster and has held the journeyman license for eighteen months has one gate open and one shut, and the later of the two dates is the one that governs.

The two years has to sit on a journeyman electrician license specifically. A journeyman industrial electrician license is a different license with a different scope, and holding it for two years does not stand in.

The hours reach the department on the department's own form. 16 TAC 73.26(a) has the applicant verify completion of the required on-the-job training by submitting the experience verification form with the license application, and TDLR publishes it as ELC017. It goes in with the application rather than after it.

Who signs is set by statute rather than by payroll. Tex. Occ. Code 1305.153(b)(3) gives a master electrician authority to verify on-the-job training for four licenses: master electrician, master sign electrician, journeyman electrician and journeyman sign electrician. That is the express grant, and it is the one your own form runs on.

The limit inside it is the part people trip on. 16 TAC 73.26(b) has the licensee verify only training within the licensee's knowledge, so a master of record who never came to your jobs cannot cover the year he did not see. A long run under several supervisors is several forms, and the gaps are cheaper to find now than at the point of filing.

The licensee has 30 calendar days from the request to provide the verification (16 TAC 73.26(b)). Calendar days, so weekends are inside the count. Those thirty days spend your own window rather than theirs, which is the argument for asking early.

Since March 2025 the master examination has been given as two separately scored parts, a calculations part and a code knowledge part, which is why the department's statistics show two rows for one license.

Neither row is a pass rate for the license. A master candidate sits both parts, so anyone quoting 19.1 percent as the Texas master electrician pass rate has taken one portion and called it the whole thing. Those two rows sit inside 26,303 attempts across every Texas electrical examination that year.

The examination is open book, and the book is the edition Texas has adopted. Since 1 September 2026 that is the 2026 National Electrical Code, adopted at 16 TAC 73.100 with one Texas amendment at subsection (b). Our page on which edition applies sets out what moved and what did not.

Eligibility is decided on the application rather than in advance. 16 TAC 73.21(a) has the department review the application and the documentation before anybody is approved to test, so the sequence is file, be approved, then schedule with the testing vendor.

Every fee under 16 TAC 73.80 is non-refundable at subsection (e), including an application the department rejects on eligibility, so settle the eligibility question before you pay it.

The examination fee is not on this table because it is not in the rule. 16 TAC 73.80 sets none, and the department's testing vendor collects it at the amount current when you book. Confirm it on your own admission paperwork rather than from any summary, this one included.

One waiver is worth asking about. 16 TAC 73.80(g) waives the renewal fee for a master electrician who provides proof of having served as an instructor of a course within a career and technology education program for at least one academic semester, and the 1 July 2026 amendment extended it to instructors of an Accelerated Journeyman Electrician Education Program. It is not applied automatically.

A master license is what an electrical contractor license is built on. Tex. Occ. Code 1305.159(a) has an electrical contractor be or employ a licensed master electrician, establish proof of financial responsibility, and handle workers compensation in one of the ways Labor Code Chapter 406 allows.

The personal half of that is the sentence that decides most real questions.

One master, one contractor. The exception is ownership and it is more than fifty percent, not fifty. So a master cannot be the named master for two companies in the ordinary case, and a company looking for a master of record is looking for somebody who is not already named somewhere else.

Three duties follow the role rather than the license. Design of an electrical system is done by a licensed master electrician or a design professional authorized by statute, and it is not subcontracted to an unlicensed person, firm or corporation (16 TAC 73.51(c)). All of a contractor's electrical work is performed by licensed individuals (16 TAC 73.51(b)(4)). And when the assignment ends, the contractor notifies the department within thirty business days from the date the master electrician's employment ended (16 TAC 73.51(a)(1)).

The insurance floor belongs to the contractor license rather than to your master license: general liability of $300,000 for any one occurrence, a $600,000 aggregate, and a further $300,000 aggregate for products and completed operations (16 TAC 73.40). Our page on the contractor license takes that apart.

The license runs one year from the date it is issued and renews annually (16 TAC 73.22(a)), so the master and the first-year apprentice are on the same cycle. Four hours of continuing education come due before each renewal, from a provider TDLR has registered, and the same course cannot be credited twice (16 TAC 73.25). Keep the certificate for a year after completion (16 TAC 73.25(f)).

Reporting those hours is the provider's responsibility rather than yours, which is why TDLR publishes a tool for checking your own completed courses. If a course you paid for is not showing, the provider is who to chase.

The renewal date itself is worth reading off the department's license search rather than off memory, because it runs from issuance and not from a calendar month. Our license lookup guide explains what that search shows.