Texas Journeyman PrepGetting licensed in Texas

Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

Texas 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 of license types and why it carries a fee, a term and a renewal.

On this page
  1. Two apprentice licenses, two age thresholds
  2. No examination, and what that leaves the application to be
  3. The temporary license, and its expiry
  4. What an apprentice may do
  5. Where the license stops
  6. Continuing education, with an alternative nobody else gets
  7. Fees and the term
  8. What it is a step toward
  9. What this page cites

Two apprentice licenses, two age thresholds

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.161(a) asks an applicant for an electrical apprentice license to be at least 16 years of age and to be engaged in the process of learning and assisting in the installation of electrical work under the supervision of a licensed master electrician. The subsection opens with the words except as provided by Subsection (b), which is the sign side.

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.161(b) asks an applicant for an electrical sign apprentice license to be at least 18 years of age and to be engaged in learning and assisting in the performance of electrical sign work under the supervision of a licensed master sign electrician.

Sixteen and eighteen. The gap is real and it is easy to read past, because the two subsections are otherwise built the same way.

Age is only half of each test. Both subsections also ask that you actually be engaged in learning under the named kind of licensee, so the eligibility question is about a working arrangement and not only about a birthday.

No examination, and what that leaves the application to be

Neither apprentice license has one, and that is checkable from three directions rather than being an absence of evidence.

PSI administers nine Texas electrician examinations, one for each individual license except these two. TDLR's examination statistics for fiscal 2025 carry a row for every license with an examination behind it, and there is no apprentice row on that table. And 16 TAC 73.20(a)(1), which names the license types that must document on-the-job training with the application, does not name either apprentice license.

What is left is the form, the fee, and the statutory condition about who you are learning under. That is the whole of it, which is why this license is usually the first thing a person holds and why it can be held within days of deciding to.

The temporary license, and its expiry

On the request of an applicant for an apprentice license, the executive director shall issue a temporary apprentice license that expires on the 21st day after the date of issuance to an applicant who meets the qualifications established by the executive director.

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.161(c)

The qualifications the statute leaves to the executive director are set out in the rule. 16 TAC 73.27(a) issues the temporary license to an applicant who has not been convicted of a criminal offense and who pays the required fee, and 16 TAC 73.27(b) makes it valid for 21 days and says it may not be renewed.

Tex. Occ. Code 1305.161(d) is the subsection that sends those details to the rule in the first place, by directing the commission to set the fee, the qualifications and the issuance process. So a source that tells you the conditions are in the statute has not read 1305.161(d).

Twenty-one days is a bridge to the real license rather than a trial period. It runs out on a fixed date measured from issuance, not from when you started work, and there is no second one.

What an apprentice may do

16 TAC 73.10(13) defines the electrical apprentice as an individual, licensed as an apprentice, who works under the on-site supervision of a master electrician, journeyman electrician or residential wireman, on behalf of an electrical contractor or an employing governmental entity, performing electrical work as Tex. Occ. Code 1305.002(11) defines it.

That paragraph number moved on 1 July 2026. The amendment creating the accelerated journeyman electrician education program put a new definition at paragraph (12) and pushed every definition below it down one place, so a copy of the rule saved before that date shows the electrical apprentice at (12). Paragraphs (1) through (11) did not move.

Look at the supervision list rather than the paragraph number. Three license types can hold on-site supervision of an apprentice, not just a master. That is a different question from who can supervise hours that count toward a license, which the statute answers on its own terms and answers more narrowly.

The electrical sign apprentice gets its own definition in the same rule, working under a master electrician, a master sign electrician or a journeyman sign electrician, on behalf of an electrical sign contractor.

Where the license stops

Supervising is the first limit. 16 TAC 73.10(8) defines on-site supervision as supervision exercised by a licensed individual other than an electrical apprentice, so an apprentice is never the supervising licensee for another apprentice, however long they have held the license.

The second is more often stated backwards. The same definition says continuous supervision of an apprentice is not called for, and puts the duty of reviewing and inspecting the apprentice's work on the supervising licensee. On-site is not a proximity test, and it is not a gap in responsibility either. The duty sits with the supervising licensee whether or not they were standing there.

The third is that this license is a prerequisite in one place and not in others. Tex. Occ. Code 1305.1601 wants the 8,000 hours for a journeyman industrial electrician worked as a licensed electrical apprentice, a condition the journeyman electrician section at Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155 does not carry.

Continuing education, with an alternative nobody else gets

Both apprentice licenses are on the list of ten license types owing four hours before each renewal (16 TAC 73.25(b)).

16 TAC 73.25(c) then offers a substitute that exists for these two licenses and no others: in lieu of the four hours, an electrical apprentice or electrical sign apprentice may enroll in a department-registered apprenticeship training program.

Registered is doing real work in that sentence. 16 TAC 73.25(h) sets out what a program has to show the department to be registered, and it turns on recognition by a named Texas body or by the United States Department of Labor rather than on what the program calls itself. A course sold as an apprenticeship program is not automatically one of these.

Timing matters too. For a renewal filed on time, the hours have to have been completed, or the enrollment to have happened, inside the term of the license being renewed (16 TAC 73.25(d)).

Fees and the term

Twenty dollars to apply, at 16 TAC 73.80(a)(10) for the electrical apprentice and 16 TAC 73.80(a)(11) for the electrical sign apprentice.

Twenty to renew, at 16 TAC 73.80(b)(10) and 16 TAC 73.80(b)(11). Neither line carries the February 2014 split that still sits on the master and journeyman rows above them. A replacement license is twenty as well (16 TAC 73.80(d)(2) and (d)(3)).

The license runs one year from the date it is issued and renews annually (16 TAC 73.22(a)). An apprentice who works four years toward a journeyman license will therefore have renewed this one four times, and each of those renewals is a date somebody may later ask about.

What it is a step toward

Hours toward a journeyman electrician license are counted by who supervised them, not by what license you held while working them (Tex. Occ. Code 1305.155). Holding this license does not by itself build that count, and not holding it does not destroy one.

The accelerated journeyman electrician education program, defined at 16 TAC 73.10(12) since 1 July 2026, is a different route to the same place, and 16 TAC 73.112 is where its hour credit is set.

So the apprentice license is best understood as the thing that makes you legal on site while the count happens somewhere else, and as the thing one other license insists you were holding the whole time.

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.