Colorado State Electrical Board, Division of Professions and Occupations, Department of Regulatory Agencies
Colorado licenses individual electricians. You need a state license in your own name to do this work here, whoever you work for.
Every requirement on this page belongs to a license class the state names itself. Each one has its own experience requirements, fees and exam rules. There are four of them here, so read the one you are aiming at rather than the page as a whole.
What Colorado licenses
Both answers come directly from the state licensing authority.
| Residential Wireman | 4,000 hours on the job |
|---|---|
| Master Electrician | 10,000 hours on the job |
We use the state's published licensing requirements throughout this page. If the state doesn't publish a requirement, we don't guess.
There are two different licensing paths here: one for people working as electricians, and one for the contracting business. If you're starting your career, focus on the worker license first. You may need the one for the business later, if you decide to run the contracting business yourself.
Each license class below has its own experience requirements, fees and exam rules. Start with the class you're working toward: everything below depends on it. We use the state's official license names, so you'll see the same terms on its forms.
The experience requirements for each license are quoted below exactly as the state publishes them. The licensing authority decides whether your experience qualifies, so keep your own record from day one and make sure your employer can verify your hours.
If your license requires an exam, the exam name and its fee are listed under that license class. The licensing authority and the testing company are often different organizations, so the exam fee is often paid to the testing company. That's why the exam fee may appear in the candidate bulletin instead of the fee schedule.
Each license class below lists the fees the state publishes for it. Renewal varies by class too, so check the renewal period and fee for the class you are working toward rather than for the trade as a whole.
Three of Colorado's licenses are held by the worker. Each is a separate license with its own experience requirements, fees and exam rules.
Not published for any class here: an exam fee, a license fee or states that recognize it.
Held by the worker · issued by the state
4,000 hours on the job.5 $100 to apply.6 PSI administers the exam.1 You renew this every three years, with 24 hours of approved continuing education.5
The state doesn't list classroom hours or licenses it recognizes from other states.
Held by the worker · issued by the state
8,000 hours on the job.5 288 hours in a classroom.5 $120 to apply.6 PSI administers the exam.1 You renew this every three years, with 24 hours of approved continuing education.5
Held by the worker · issued by the state
10,000 hours on the job.5 $140 to apply.6 PSI administers the exam.1 You renew this every three years, with 24 hours of approved continuing education.5
The state doesn't list classroom hours.
There are three license levels here, and each is a separate license. The hours below are totals for each license, not additional hours on top of the last one. One of them also counts classroom hours, and those are counted apart from the job.
Residential Wireman
4,000 hours of residential only experience earned in no less than 2 years.5
Journeyman Electrician
8,000 hours of experience earned in no less than 4 years. 2,000 hours of which must be in commercial/industrial work.5
Master Electrician
10,000 hours of experience earned in no less than 5 years.5
The state does say whether the hours it requires can be earned online.
Journeyman Electrician
Acceptable 288 Hours Training Activities. The Board deems the following types of activities to be acceptable. On-line delivery and participation in Board Rule 1.7(D)(1) may be acceptable if in compliance with these Rules, including but not limited to Board Rule 1.6(D)(8).7
57 registered apprenticeships train Colorado electricians. People who finished one recently left at a median of $32.13 an hour.
See every program and what they payAmong the electricians on a payroll in Colorado, half earn more than $29.92 an hour and half earn less. The federal wage survey puts the annual figure at $62,230.4
These figures cover every experience level, from first-year apprentices to workers with decades on the job, so this is not what an apprentice earns. The survey counts 17,010 of these jobs. Self-employed workers are not included in the survey.4
The yearly figure assumes 2,080 paid hours, which is full time with no long gaps. Actual earnings can be lower where work is interrupted or seasonal.
Figures from the federal wage survey for May 2025, read 2026-08-16. The survey’s state file is a spreadsheet in a zip, not a web page.
This credential applies if you plan to take work in your own name. It is issued to the business itself rather than to any one person.
Held by the business · issued by the state
You renew this every three years. The published renewal requirements do not list any additional hours requirement.5
Electrical Contractor registration
Hold or employ a licensed master electrician to serve as the responsible individual for the company.5
The state doesn't list job hours, classroom hours, an exam name, who runs it, an application fee or licenses it recognizes from other states.
PSI administers every exam listed on this page. The exam provider sets the exam content, publishes the study material and sets retake fees. Use the official exam names below when you look for study material, application instructions or retake information. No page here prices the exam. The fee belongs to whoever administers it and is published in a candidate bulletin rather than in a fee schedule.
The Colorado State Electrical Board, Division of Professions and Occupations, Department of Regulatory Agencies issues all worker and contractor credentials covered on this page.
Colorado publishes a list of the states whose licenses it recognizes, class by class, and the lists are below. It does not publish the other direction: whether another state recognizes a license from Colorado is that state's decision. Moving to Colorado? Contact Colorado State Electrical Board, Division of Professions and Occupations, Department of Regulatory Agencies and ask whether your current license will be recognized. Leaving? Contact the licensing authority in the state where you plan to work.
Journeyman Electrician: Colorado accepts a license toward it from Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming5
Colorado licenses individual electricians. You need a state license in your own name to do this work here, whoever you work for. Colorado licenses electrician contractors as well. Taking work in your own name, rather than working for somebody who holds that license, needs a second and different one.
Colorado publishes an hours figure for three of the four license classes here: Residential Wireman, 4,000 hours on the job, Journeyman Electrician, 8,000 hours on the job and Master Electrician, 10,000 hours on the job. Each figure belongs to the class it is named under and to no other. The state does not publish a working week, so nothing here turns hours into months. How fast you get there depends on how many you work in a year.
The middle half of the electricians on a payroll in Colorado earn between $23.50 and $37.73 an hour, and half of all of them earn more than $29.92. These are straight-time figures, before any overtime, at every experience level, counted by the federal wage survey in May 2025. Self-employed workers are not included in them.4
The top tenth of electricians on a payroll in Colorado earn above $45.27 an hour, which over a 2,080-hour year comes to more than $94,160. Those are straight-time figures: overtime pay is outside them, and so are self-employed workers. The federal wage survey counts what the top tenth earn above, not how many reach any figure past it.4
The state publishes these: $100 to apply for Residential Wireman, $120 to apply for Journeyman Electrician and $140 to apply for Master Electrician. Each is per class, not per trade. None of them is the exam: where a vendor administers the exam, that fee is the vendor's and lives in its own bulletin.
Yes, for some. Colorado recognizes a license toward Journeyman Electrician from Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. This is the inbound direction only, and it says nothing about taking a license from here somewhere else. The conditions attached, such as how long you have held yours, are published by the state rather than in the list.
There is no national answer. Any page that gives you one is averaging states whose requirements differ by thousands of hours. Licensing is set state by state, and in some states city by city, so the honest version of this question has a place in it. What is the same everywhere is the shape: you learn on the job, the hours that count are the ones somebody signs for, and the clock starts the day the work does.
Yes, and that is the ordinary way in. These trades are learned at work rather than before it, which is why boards mostly require time on the job. What you cannot skip is the paperwork: the hours that count are the ones somebody signs for, so the question to ask an employer is who signs, not whether they will train you.
No. Boards set a minimum age, not a maximum. No board on these pages sets an upper limit, and where age shows up at all it is a floor. The real question at 30 is money: an apprenticeship pays you while you learn and school charges you while you learn. That difference usually decides it.
None of the boards on these pages publishes a pass rate. The useful question is who administers the exam: that organization sells the reference material for it and sets what a retake costs.