Texas Journeyman PrepGetting licensed in Texas

Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

The 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 skips the hours and costs you something else.

On this page
  1. The two routes in
  2. Who it is written for
  3. The scope
  4. The trap in the school route
  5. What the school route actually involves
  6. The examination
  7. Fee, renewal, and a waiver worth knowing about
  8. What this page cites

The two routes in

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.157 takes either at least 4,000 hours of on-the-job training under the supervision of a master electrician or a residential wireman, or successful completion of a career and technology education program described by Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1575. Both routes end at the same examination.

The school route arrived with House Bill 1391 in the 2023 session and took effect on 1 September 2023. The accelerated journeyman program added three years later does something comparable for a different license, and it lives in the rules rather than in the statute (16 TAC 73.112).

A person who successfully completes a sequence of courses in the electrical trade that are offered through a career and technology education program may apply for and take an examination for a license as a residential wireman, regardless of whether the person has completed the number of hours of on-the-job training required by Section 1305.157(1).

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1575(b)

Supervision on the hours route is wider than the journeyman requirement. A residential wireman can sign hours for the next residential wireman, where Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155 will accept nobody but a master electrician.

Who it is written for

Somebody wiring houses and small apartment buildings, who wants a license now rather than at 8,000 hours, and whose work is not going to move into commercial buildings.

That last clause is the one to sit with, because the scope of this license is a wall rather than a slope.

The scope

Residential wireman means a person licensed under this chapter who may only perform electrical installations in single-family and multifamily dwellings not exceeding four stories.

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.002

Four stories is the line and there is nothing behind it. The license does not reach commercial work at any height, and no amount of experience widens it, because the width is written into the definition of the license rather than into a rule about competence.

16 TAC 73.10 adds a limit the statute leaves out. It describes a residential wireman as working under the general supervision of a master electrician, on behalf of an electrical contractor or an employing governmental entity. So this is not a license to contract and it is not a license to work on your own account.

Notice the verb as well as the building. The statute says electrical installations. A maintenance electrician license runs the other way around, covering repair and replacement of what is already installed and stopping short of new work.

The trap in the school route

Hours spent completing a program described by this section may not be credited toward any on-the-job training required to apply for a license under this chapter.

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1575(g)

Read that with the journeyman license in mind, because that is where it bites.

The program gets you the residential wireman license. The time you spent inside the program does not appear on the ledger for the 8,000 hours that Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155 asks for, and it never will.

What the bar reaches is program time. It is written about hours spent completing a program described by that section and it does not create any general rule against crediting work you performed under a master electrician.

So the choice is not between a fast route and a slow one. It is between a route that produces one license quickly and a route that produces the same license later while building the count for a second one.

What the school route actually involves

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1575 defines the program as one under Education Code Chapter 29, Subchapter F, or a substantially similar program offered by an institution of higher education or a private school. A high school program is the model and the others are measured against it.

Instruction must be delivered by a licensed master electrician, journeyman electrician or residential wireman (Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1575). The same three licenses appear again in the fee waiver further down this page, which is a useful cross-check that you are reading the right list.

A program at an institution of higher education may not be held to a stricter standard than the public high school version (Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1575).

The standards themselves, meaning the courses and the practical component, sit in 16 TAC 73.110. That section was amended effective 1 July 2026: its title now names residential wiremen, a new subsection went in at the top to separate it from the accelerated journeyman program, and the subsections underneath moved down a letter. If you are checking a citation against a copy saved before that date, the letters will not line up. Read the current section.

Completion is proved to the department in a form it accepts, rather than on the ordinary experience verification form (16 TAC 73.26(d)).

The examination

One paper in a single sitting, and the busiest of the nine Texas electrician examinations after the journeyman electrician and master electrician ones.

The PSI candidate information bulletin revised 9 July 2026 puts it at 80 scored items with 5 unscored, 240 minutes, and 70 percent to pass. The $64 examination fee is paid to PSI and is not the $20 you pay the department to apply.

TDLR recorded 331 passes from 1,098 tests in fiscal 2025, a rate of 30.15 percent, with another 83 candidates who did not show. That is fifth of the twelve rows on TDLR's table, and unlike most of the small licenses it rests on a sample big enough to mean something.

Fee, renewal, and a waiver worth knowing about

The application fee is twenty dollars (16 TAC 73.80(a)(6)), and so is the renewal once you are past the February 2014 line that still sits in the rule (16 TAC 73.80(b)(6)). A revised or duplicate license costs another twenty (16 TAC 73.80(d)(4)).

A residential wireman license expires a year after the day it was issued, which makes the renewal date personal to you (16 TAC 73.22(a)). Four hours of continuing education go in before each one (16 TAC 73.25(b)).

16 TAC 73.80(g) waives the renewal fee for a master electrician, journeyman electrician or residential wireman who has served at least one academic semester as an instructor of a course in a career and technology education program, and since 1 July 2026 in an accelerated journeyman program too. Three licenses are on that list and this is one of them, which makes teaching the cheapest way to hold this license.

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.