Checked against primary sources 2026-08-24

The Texas journeyman exam is two tests now, and most people fail the wrong half

Since March 11, 2025 the journeyman exam has been a knowledge portion and a calculations portion, scored separately. The calculations half fails just under four candidates in five.

What the split changed

Before March 11, 2025 the journeyman exam was one test. Now it is two portions, each scored on its own, and a candidate can pass one and fail the other.

That sounds like a convenience. In practice it exposed something the combined score used to hide: candidates were not failing on code knowledge. They were failing on arithmetic.

The numbers TDLR publishes

For fiscal year 2025, which ran September 1, 2024 to August 31, 2025, the department reports these:

Across every Texas electrical exam, 26,303 attempts produced 6,181 passes. That is a 23.50 percent pass rate, down from 26.37 percent the year before.

Read the calculations rows again. More people sit the calculations portion than the knowledge portion, and fewer of them pass. The hardest, highest-volume part of becoming a licensed electrician in Texas is the math.

How many questions, and how long

The bulletin prints two item counts for each portion and they are not the same number. Scored items decide your result. Unscored pretest items are mixed in and do not count, but you sit for them and you cannot tell which they are.

Each portion is passed at 70 percent, and the two are scored separately.

Pace it on the total, because that is what is in front of you. Journeyman knowledge is 130 minutes over 59 items, about 2.2 minutes each. Journeyman calculations is 110 over 26, about 4.2 minutes. Master calculations is the slowest at 170 over 33, about 5.2 minutes, and master knowledge is exactly 2 minutes over 75.

On scored items alone those four figures are 2.3, 4.6, 5.7 and 2.1 minutes. The difference is small and the basis is worth naming, because a plan built on 4.6 minutes a question and executed against 26 questions runs out of clock.

The subject areas, weighted

Each portion draws from ten subject areas, and the bulletin prints the item count beside every one. They sum to the scored count, so nothing here is a guess about weighting.

On the journeyman knowledge portion three areas tie for the heaviest at 10 items each: branch circuits and conductors, wiring methods and materials, and equipment and devices. Together that is 30 of the 56 scored items. Services and separately derived systems is 6, and so is special occupancies.

On the journeyman calculations portion the shape is flatter. Services and separately derived systems is 4, branch circuit calculations and conductors is also 4, feeders is 3, special occupancies is 3, and motors and generators is 2.

Motors carries far more weight one level up. On the master calculations portion services is 8 and motors and generators is 6, which is where the idea that motors dominate the calculations comes from. It is true of the master exam and not of the journeyman one.

One reference, and rules about it

The reference list for every Texas electrical exam is a single book: the National Electrical Code. No statute, no administrative rules, no textbook.

The exam is open book, and the restrictions on that book are specific. Soft-bound only. No loose-leaf, no spiral binding, no ring binding. The handbook edition stays home, because it carries commentary.

Tabs are allowed only where the publisher of the code book manufactured or provided them. Homemade, do-it-yourself and non-NEC tabs get turned away at the door, so a month spent building a personal tab system out of index flags buys you nothing in the room.

Marking the book is a question of when. Highlighting, underlining and notes written in before the session are fine. Writing, highlighting, underlining, indexing or marking it during the session is not, so everything you want in that book goes in beforehand.

You can still learn the tabbing strategy. You just have to execute it with tabs that come in.

The instruction that governs every calculation

One line in the bulletin decides how you answer:

When responding to the test questions, do not consider code exceptions or optional calculation methods unless the test question specifically directs you to consider them.

PSI Candidate Information Bulletin, TDLR Electricians, read 24 August 2026

Working electricians lose points here. In the field you reach for the optional method because it is faster and it is legal. On the exam it is wrong unless the question asks for it. The standard method is the answer.

Retakes

Because the portions are scored separately, a failed portion can be retaken without repeating the one you passed.

TDLR sets no ceiling on attempts. Its own wording is that you may retake each exam as many times as needed until you pass, and that you may be responsible for an additional fee each time. For the journeyman and the master, the fee is $78 whether you are booking both portions or retaking one.

With 20,122 failures across all Texas electrical exams in one year, retakes are not an edge case. They are most of the volume.

What this page cites

• PSI Candidate Information Bulletin Content outlines with item counts, scored and unscored counts, time limits, the 70 percent passing score, the reference list and the open book rules. Read 24 August 2026. source
• TDLR Electrician Exam Statistics FY2025 Every pass rate on this page, plus the 20,122 failures. Fiscal year ran September 1, 2024 to August 31, 2025. source
• TDLR Electrician Exam Statistics FY2024 The 26.37 percent prior-year figure, across 15,170 attempts. source
• 16 TAC 73.21 Licensing Requirements - Examinations. It requires a passing score on an examination approved by the executive director of TDLR, and leaves the format, the item counts and the score to the department. source