Texas Journeyman PrepGetting licensed in Texas

Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

The 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 to the other is the most common mistake made about this license.

On this page
  1. The requirement, and the words that are missing from it
  2. Where the confusion comes from
  3. The scope
  4. Two situations where the license is not required at all
  5. How you prove it, and a wrinkle in the rule
  6. The examination
  7. Fee, renewal and continuing education
  8. What this page cites

The requirement, and the words that are missing from it

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1605(a) offers two ways to qualify, and neither of them is on-the-job training.

The first is at least 7,000 hours of training in an apprenticeship program approved by the United States Department of Labor. The second is 3-1/2 years of experience as a journeyman lineman for an electric utility, electric cooperative, municipally owned utility, or electrical contractor in this state. The statute writes the second one as 3-1/2 years, not three and a half. Either way, you then pass the journeyman lineman examination.

Elsewhere in the chapter an hour figure counts supervised work signed for by a named Texas licensee. Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155, Tex. Occ. Code 1305.157 and Tex. Occ. Code 1305.158 each name one. This section names none. What it counts is program training carrying a federal approval, or time served for one of four kinds of employer.

Where the confusion comes from

Texas electrical licensing now has two unrelated 7,000s.

This license has had one since 2013. Then on 1 July 2026 a rule amendment gave the journeyman electrician a second one, letting an applicant sit that examination at 7,000 hours of on-the-job training while still needing 8,000 hours to hold the license (16 TAC 73.21(b)).

One of those numbers counts hours you worked under a Texas master electrician. The other counts hours inside an apprenticeship program registered with the United States Department of Labor, which a Texas licensee has nothing to do with. A table that prints both without a column saying which is which is worse than a table that prints neither, because the reader plans around it.

It gets one degree worse if you also carry the journeyman electrician figure of 8,000 in your head, because that one is a licensing threshold rather than an examination threshold. Three numbers, three different questions.

The scope

Journeyman lineman means an individual who engages in electrical work involving the maintenance and operation of equipment associated with the transmission and distribution of electricity from the electricity's original source to a substation for further distribution.

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.002

That is subdivision (12) of the definitions, and it is the whole of the scope.

Read the verbs as carefully as the endpoints. The definition names maintenance and operation, and the equipment it names is the transmission and distribution system between the original source and a substation. The further distribution that happens past the substation is described but not claimed.

So this license does not sit on the same ladder as the rest of the chapter. It does not lead to a journeyman electrician license, it does not overlap with premises wiring, and holding it says nothing about work inside a building.

Two situations where the license is not required at all

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1605(b)(1) removes the requirement for a person performing work exempt under Tex. Occ. Code 1305.003(a)(5), which is the utility equipment exemption and the reason a great deal of line work in Texas is done by people holding no state electrical license.

That exemption turns on two things at once. The equipment has to be under the exclusive control of an electric utility, a power generation company as the Utilities Code defines one, an electric cooperative or a municipally owned utility, and used for communications, metering, or the generation, control, transmission and distribution of electrical energy. Then it has to be in one of four kinds of place: a building the utility uses exclusively for those purposes, outdoors on property it owns or leases, on a public right-of-way, or outdoors by established rights in vaults or on private property (Tex. Occ. Code 1305.003(a)(5)).

The second carve-out is narrower and stranger. Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1605(b)(2) excuses a person who is performing journeyman lineman work, holds a journeyman electrician license, and is employed by an institution of higher education as Education Code 61.003 defines it. All three conditions at once, and a university lineman who happens not to hold a journeyman electrician license is not inside it.

How you prove it, and a wrinkle in the rule

16 TAC 73.20(a)(4) requires a journeyman lineman applicant to submit documentation of the apprenticeship program training or of the experience as a journeyman lineman. That is the paragraph written for this license.

16 TAC 73.26(c) then says the verification goes in on a form the department finds acceptable, rather than on the experience verification form the other licenses use. There is no supervising licensee to countersign, which is the practical consequence of a statute that never asked for one.

The wrinkle is that 16 TAC 73.20(a)(1) also lists journeyman lineman among the licenses submitting proof of on-the-job training, a phrase Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1605 never uses. The two paragraphs are not in conflict about what you have to produce, but if somebody tells you to get a master electrician to sign your hours, that stray listing is where it comes from.

Whichever route you are on, 16 TAC 73.20(b) gives you one year from the date the application is filed to finish everything, examination included.

The examination

The shortest and cheapest of the nine Texas electrician examinations. The PSI candidate information bulletin revised 9 July 2026 puts it at 40 scored items with 3 unscored, 120 minutes, and 70 percent to pass, for a $61 fee paid to PSI.

That $61 is separate from the $30 you pay the department to apply. They are two payments to two different bodies, and summaries that quote a single cost for this license have added them together or dropped one.

TDLR recorded 8 passes from 20 tests in fiscal 2025, which is 40.00 percent, with 2 more candidates who did not appear. Twenty tests is not a sample you can plan against. One additional pass would have put the published rate at 45 percent, and the year before is no help either, because the volume is this low every year.

Fee, renewal and continuing education

Thirty dollars to apply, at 16 TAC 73.80(a)(5), and thirty to renew, at 16 TAC 73.80(b)(5). That renewal line is a flat figure with no date condition attached, unlike the master and journeyman electrician lines above it, which still carry a split for licenses expiring before February 2014. A replacement license is $25 (16 TAC 73.80(d)(1)).

One year from issuance, then every year after that (16 TAC 73.22(a)).

Four hours of continuing education before each renewal. Journeyman lineman is one of the ten license types named at 16 TAC 73.25(b), so the four hours and the subjects they come from are identical to a journeyman electrician's, which surprises people who assume a line worker's obligation would be written separately.

What this page cites

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Bring your own current copy of the National Electrical Code. The Texas exam is open book.

All practice questions are original. They are not actual exam questions.

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.