TEXAS · ELECTRICIAN · UPDATED FROM FEDERAL RECORDS
How to become an electrician in Texas: get paid to train.
You don't need experience to start this trade: you need the state's $20 apprentice license and a program from the list below, and the largest program requires a diploma or GED, not years on tools. An apprenticeship is a real job where the training is the work. Texas has 197 of them, with 21,579 people in training at the last federal count. This page is how you find yours.
01 THE PAY
How much do electrician apprentices make in Texas?
The median starting wage was $16.25 an hour across 14,113 recent starting records: half were above it and half were below. Separately, recent completers had a median recorded wage of $26.83 an hour. These are different groups of apprentices, not the same people tracked from start to finish. The middle half of starting wages fell between $15.00 and $18.50 an hour.
The median across 14,113 recent starting records from 108 programs. The middle half earned between $15.00 and $18.50 an hour. At 40 hours a week, $16.25 works out to about $650 before taxes.
IEC Dallas does not publish an apprentice wage rate. Your wage is set by the member contractor that hires you, and the program says apprentices receive regular raises while enrolled without publishing the amounts. What IEC Dallas does publish is its tuition structure: 53 cents is deducted from your pay for each hour worked, and your contractor pays another $25 per week to the program. Whether you pay for books depends on your contractor.
Texas requires apprentice electricians to hold a state license. It costs $20 to apply, requires no previous experience or exam, and is renewed yearly. IEC Dallas requires applicants to upload this license with their application, so you need it before applying to that program.
02 HOW TO APPLY
How to apply, and how long it takes
No experience needed. At the largest program open to outside applicants, the requirements are documents: a diploma or GED with your transcript, a U.S. ID, your Social Security card, a current state apprentice electrician license, and being 18 by the time classes start. Veterans bring a DD-214, and men need Selective Service registration.
Finishing takes about four years. IEC Dallas requires 8,000 hours on the job plus 576 hours of evening classes, held from September through May. Passing the Texas journeyman electrician exam is also part of completing the program. Tuition is deducted from your pay at 53 cents for each hour you work. Start in September and class meets one night a week; start in January and it meets two nights a week.
Many of the largest programs are run by contractor associations; others are run by union-contractor committees. IEC stands for Independent Electrical Contractors, whose Dallas, Houston, and Austin chapters train some of the largest groups of apprentices in the state. The JATCs on the list are Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committees run by the electricians' union and participating contractors. Many smaller programs are individual companies training their own employees. Pick two or three programs near you, search each program's name with its city, and ask how and when they take applications.
The state apprentice electrician license comes first: $20 to apply online, no exam required, and renewed yearly.
Apply directly to IEC Dallas with your documents and a $40 application fee. The program starts classes in September and January.
IEC Dallas arranges interviews with up to three member contractors. You enter the apprenticeship once one of them hires you.
Evening classes run from September through May while you work full time, with job sites across the Dallas-Fort Worth area and workdays often starting around 6 am. You stay with the contractor that hired you; switching contractors while enrolled is grounds for termination. The program takes about four years to complete, followed by the journeyman electrician exam.
03 THE PROGRAMS
Every registered electrician apprenticeship in Texas
All 197 programs, ranked by each sponsor's total apprentices at the latest federal count. The bar shows that total. For the 41 sponsors that train more than one trade, the count includes apprentices in their other trades as well. Ranks cover all 197 programs. Prison-run programs keep their overall rank but are listed separately below. A zero means no apprentices were recorded in training in this dataset; it does not necessarily mean the program has closed.
The biggest programs
Smaller and single-company programs
SHOW ALL 131 SMALLER PROGRAMS
Run inside prisons
The 4 programs in this section are the ones the federal data marks as training people who are incarcerated: Windham School District, the school system inside Texas state prisons, and three federal correctional institutions. They're part of the state's count, but you cannot apply to them from outside, and none of the wage numbers above include them.
04 LICENSING
Texas licenses you in your own name
Texas licenses electricians at the state level: you need a license in your own name to do this work here, whoever you work for. It starts with the $20 apprentice license, and the journeyman license comes later, on hours and an exam. The licensing page lays out who issues what, the exams, and the fees, with a source for each.
How electrician licensing works in Texas05 SOURCES
- U.S. Department of Labor national apprenticeship data, extract of August 17, 2026. Every program, every count, and the two medians and the starting-wage band on this page.
- IEC Dallas apprenticeship pages and application form, iecdallas.com, accessed 2026-09-02. The application model, the fees, the tuition, the class schedule, and the requirements on this page.
- Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, apprentice electrician license, tdlr.texas.gov, accessed 2026-09-02. The $20 license and its terms.
- Windham School District 2025 to 2029 strategic plan, wsdtx.org, accessed 2026-09-02. That its schools serve people incarcerated in Texas prisons.
- 35 Texas filings in the source data name a different state inside their own registration numbers. They are under review, and no figure on this page counts them.
EVERY FIGURE ON THIS PAGE IS FROM U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR NATIONAL APPRENTICESHIP DATA, EXTRACT OF AUGUST 17, 2026, EXCEPT THE SOURCE-MARKED RATES IN THE MONEY SECTION.