Oklahoma Journeyman Electrician License: Requirements, Hours, and the PSI Exam

Oklahoma Journeyman Electrician License: Requirements and the Exam

Oklahoma licenses electricians statewide through the Construction Industries Board (CIB). The license most people mean by "journeyman" is the Unlimited Electrical Journeyman, which covers light, heat, power, data and communications work in a supervised environment. CIB decides who is eligible; PSI gives the exam. Here is what the license takes.

Experience

To apply you must be at least 18 and have 8,000 hours (four years) of on-the-job experience in the electrical construction trade, working under the supervision of a journeyman or contractor while employed by a licensed electrical contractor.

• 4,000 of those hours must be commercial or industrial. Residential-only experience will not get you there.
• Up to 2,000 hours of verified classroom time in formal electrical education can count toward the 8,000. You will need a transcript.
• Oklahoma experience counts only while you are registered as an apprentice. If you worked in Oklahoma without an apprentice registration, those hours do not count.

If you hold a residential journeyman license, you can work as an apprentice on commercial and industrial jobs to build the commercial hours for the unlimited exam.

Applying

1. Submit the journeyman application to CIB.
2. Once CIB approves it, you get the vendor's details and an Ok Con ID number for your PSI account.
3. Schedule and pay for the exam with PSI.

Your exam eligibility does not expire, so there is no deadline to test once you are approved.

Fees

PSI fees are non-refundable and non-transferable.

The exam

There is no Oklahoma law section on the journeyman exam. The separate Electrical Business and Law exam is for contractors. The code is the 2023 NEC as revised and adopted by the Oklahoma Uniform Building Code Commission, which has been the exam edition since December 14, 2024. What is on the exam breaks down all 13 areas.

The pass mark dropped from 75% to 70% for exams taken on or after November 1, 2024, and the retake wait dropped from 90 days to 30, both under HB 3215.

Pass rates

CIB does not publish pass rates for the electrical exams.

Renewal and continuing education

• The license renews every year. It expires on the last day of your birth month.
• You can renew up to one year after it expires. After that you reapply and retest.
• Continuing education starts January 1, 2026: 12 hours every three years before expiration. 6 of the 12 hours must cover the codes and revisions adopted by the OUBCC. The other 6 can cover theory, wiring methods, grounding, NFPA 70E, the Electrical License Act and rules, and similar topics.
• You are exempt from CE for three years after passing your current licensing exam.

Reciprocity

CIB lists journeyman reciprocity agreements with Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming. To use one, you must have held your license at least one year, it must have been obtained by exam (not grandfathered), and you provide your work history. For a state without an agreement, CIB can grant exam equivalency case by case.

Moving up to contractor

The Unlimited Electrical Contractor license takes 12,000 hours (6,000 commercial or industrial) plus two years as a licensed unlimited journeyman, and two exam portions: the trade exam and Business and Law. The trade exam uses the same outline as the journeyman exam. It works the other way too: if you pass only the trade portion of the unlimited contractor exam, you can apply that score to a journeyman license application within one year.

Getting ready

Try our free practice test on the 2023 NEC, or see the full Oklahoma Journeyman Electrician exam prep. For the test itself, see Oklahoma Journeyman Electrician exam day.