Georgia issues no state license to an individual electrician. Work for an employer and you need none from the state. What Georgia licenses is the contractor, meaning the business that holds the job. Take work in your own name, bid a job or pull a permit, and that contractor license is the one that applies to you. Cities can still license the trade themselves.
The question here isn't which license you qualify for. It's whether you take the work in your own name. Work as an employee and Georgia requires nothing of you. Bid a job or pull a permit and one of the two here becomes yours.
What Georgia licenses
If you work for an employerNo licenseYou don't need a state license to do electrician work as an employee in Georgia.
If you run the contracting businessThe stateThe business needs its own contractor license.
Both answers come directly from the state licensing authority.
01
Requirements and steps
We use the state's published licensing requirements throughout this page. If the state doesn't publish a requirement, we don't guess.
1
Figure out which license you need
In Georgia the license belongs to the contracting business, not to the electrician it employs. Working as an employee needs nothing of your own. One of the classes below becomes yours the day you start taking work in your own name.
2
Choose the license class you're working toward
Each license class below has its own 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.
3
Build the required experience
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.
4
Take the exam
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.
5
Apply, pay, and keep it current
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.
02
Apprenticeship and hours
Nothing on this page counts your time in hours. Where a board states the requirement in years instead, the years are in its own wording with each class, and turning them into hours would need a working week no board here publishes.
41 registered apprenticeships train Georgia electricians. People who finished one recently left at a median of $28.14 an hour.
Among the electricians on a payroll in Georgia, half earn more than $28.04 an hour and half earn less. The federal wage survey puts the annual figure at $58,320.5
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 21,650 of these jobs. Self-employed workers are not included in the survey.5
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.
04
If you want to run an electrical business
These credentials apply if you plan to take work in your own name. Each is issued to the business itself rather than to any one person.
Not published for any class here: job hours, classroom hours, an exam fee, a license fee or states that recognize it.
Statewide Class I Electrical Contractor (Restricted)4
Held by the business · issued by the state
$110 to apply.7 PSI administers the exam.3 You renew this every two years, for $100, with 8 hours of approved continuing education.4
Worth knowingThat $110 is $100 for the application plus the $10 the board adds to process it. An older fee schedule still on the board's site says $30, and it is the out-of-date one.
Statewide Class I Electrical Contractor (Restricted)
Four years of experience in the electrical field, of which no more than one year may be credited as secondary experience or education, plus a minimum age of 21. A Class I applicant must document experience in at least five of the board's eight listed categories of work plus the load-calculation category, which the rule requires of everybody; the four years themselves are the same as Class II's.4
The state doesn't list licenses it recognizes from other states.
Statewide Class II Electrical Contractor (Unrestricted)4
Held by the business · issued by the state
$110 to apply.7 PSI administers the exam.3 You renew this every two years, for $100, with 8 hours of approved continuing education.4
Worth knowingThat $110 is $100 for the application plus the $10 the board adds to process it. An older fee schedule still on the board's site says $30, and it is the out-of-date one.
Statewide Class II Electrical Contractor (Unrestricted)
Four years of experience in the electrical field, of which no more than one year may be credited as secondary experience or education, plus a minimum age of 21. Class II applicants must document experience with installations in excess of single-phase, 200-ampere systems and in all eight listed categories of work; Class I applicants must document five of the eight plus the load-calculation category.4
The board’s pages disagree
One answer for this class comes back two ways on the state's site, and nothing on it settles which. A short call naming the class gets you the one that counts.
05
The examination
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.
Statewide Class I Electrical Contractor (Restricted)
Georgia Construction Industry Licensing Board, Division of Electrical Contractors licensure examination — Class I (Restricted)6
Statewide Class II Electrical Contractor (Unrestricted)
Georgia Construction Industry Licensing Board, Division of Electrical Contractors licensure examination — Class II (Unrestricted)6
06
The licensing office, and how to reach it
The Georgia State Board of Electrical Contractors issues all contractor credentials covered on this page.
The state doesn't list who certifies the worker or where that sits.
07
Bringing a license in, and taking one out
Georgia issues no license to an individual electrician, so there is no personal credential for an out-of-state one to convert into. The business license is a separate application. Moving to Georgia? Contact Georgia State Board of Electrical Contractors and ask whether your current license will be recognized. Leaving? Contact the licensing authority in the state where you plan to work.
08
Questions people ask
Do you need a license to be an electrician in Georgia?
Georgia issues no state license to an individual electrician. Work for an employer and you need none from the state. What Georgia licenses is the contractor, meaning the business that holds the job. Take work in your own name, bid a job or pull a permit, and that contractor license is the one that applies to you. Cities can still license the trade themselves.
How long does it take to be an electrician in Georgia?
Not as a number: Georgia doesn't publish an hours figure for any license on this page. Several states on these pages state the requirement in years instead, and turning years into hours needs a working week nobody publishes. So this page prints what was published. The experience wording with each class is where the answer is.
How much do electricians make in Georgia?
The middle half of the electricians on a payroll in Georgia earn between $22.43 and $36.77 an hour, and half of all of them earn more than $28.04. 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.5
How to make $100,000 a year as an electrician?
The top tenth of electricians on a payroll in Georgia earn above $40.39 an hour, which over a 2,080-hour year comes to more than $84,000. 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.5
How much does an electrician license cost in Georgia?
The state publishes these: $110 to apply for Statewide Class I Electrical Contractor (Restricted) and $110 to apply for Statewide Class II Electrical Contractor (Unrestricted). 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.
Can I use an electrician license from another state in Georgia?
There may be nothing to transfer. Georgia issues no license to an individual electrician at all, so an out-of-state license has nothing here to convert into. Bringing a license in and taking one out are two separate agreements, signed and published separately. Contact the licensing authority in the state where you plan to work and ask what it will recognize.
How long does it take to become an electrician?
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.
Can you become an electrician with no experience?
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.
Is 30 too late to become an electrician?
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.
How hard is the electrician licensing exam?
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.