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Electrician, issued by the state
8,000 hours in the trade, counted from your sixteenth birthday
$59,720 a year, about $28.71 an hour
Kentucky runs on manufacturing, auto plants in Georgetown and Bowling Green, an aluminum and battery corridor, bourbon distilleries across the central counties, and UPS Worldport. All of it needs power; somebody has to install and keep running it.
Day to day:
If you’ve been searching for a Kentucky journeyman electrician license, that’s why the results look thin. Kentucky doesn’t use the word journeyman. The credential is called an Electrician license, and it’s the same thing: it lets you work unsupervised for an electrical contractor.
There are three credentials issued by the Department of Housing, Buildings and Construction:
Before your work counts toward a license, your employer has to register you as an apprentice with the Kentucky Labor Cabinet. Not the licensing department, the Labor Cabinet.
Work you do before that registration is on file may not count toward your 8,000 hours. So ask your employer on your first day whether they’ve filed it, and ask again in writing if the answer is vague. Four years is a long time to find out the paperwork was never done.
Kentucky requires 8,000 hours in the electrical trade, and it counts anything since your sixteenth birthday. Then you pass the Journeyman’s Electrical Exam through PROV, NASCLA, or Pearson VUE.
You don’t have to document all 8,000 hours from work alone. Any one of these substitutes for 4,000 of them:
School cuts the work you have to document in half. It doesn’t get added on top.
To prove your hours, you send a notarized letter from a current or former employer, signed by the electrical contractor or master electrician, describing the work and the hours. If you can’t get one, because the company closed or nobody kept records, Kentucky also accepts the signed last page of your 1040 listing your occupation as electrician.
You can get licensed partway through an apprenticeship; finish two years of an approved four-year program, and Kentucky will issue your electrician license. But you have to finish the rest within four years of getting it, or the license is revoked.
Kentucky employs about 11,030 electricians, and the median is $59,720 a year, or $28.71 an hour.
Because school can cover half your hours here, it is worth looking at both routes before you commit.
SkillUp houses short, low-cost programs in one place so you’re not calling around. Our Kentucky training catalog only lists programs we have checked for cost, length, and whether they lead to work.
Kentucky reciprocates with three states, and what you get depends on which one.
Either way, you send a copy of the active license, a letter of good standing, the application and fee, and a passport-sized color photo.
SkillUp is so much more than a job board. Our free tools support you through each step:
Not under that name. Kentucky calls it an Electrician license, and it does the same job: it lets you work unsupervised for an electrical contractor. The Department of Housing, Buildings and Construction issues it.
To work unsupervised, yes. Apprentices work under a licensed electrician or master electrician. Your hours count from your sixteenth birthday, so work you did young still counts toward the 8,000.
About four years of full-time work to reach 8,000 hours. An approved apprenticeship, an associate degree in electrical technology, or two years teaching the subject each substitute for 4,000 of those hours, so any one of them roughly halves the work you have to document.
Pair documented work with one of the substitutions. An approved apprenticeship of at least 288 classroom hours, an associate degree in electrical technology, or two years teaching it each count for 4,000 hours toward the 8,000 Kentucky asks for.
16,000 hours in the trade and a harder exam. An associate degree substitutes for 6,000 of those hours, more than it does for the electrician license. Every electrical contractor has to employ at least one master electrician, and only a licensed contractor can pull electrical permits.
Yes, with Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. An Ohio electrical contractor license gets you both a Kentucky contractor and master license. Virginia and West Virginia master or journeyman licenses carry over at the same level.
Annually, with continuing education in electrical code and safety topics.
The median is $59,720 a year, about $28.71 an hour. The top quarter earns above $77,920, and the top ten percent above $85,260. Helpers have a median of $42,790.
