The Texas journeyman exam is two tests now, and most people fail the wrong half
Since March 2025 the journeyman exam has been split into a knowledge portion and a calculations portion, scored separately. The calculations half fails four candidates in five.
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What the split changed
Before March 2025 the journeyman exam was one test. Now it is two portions, each scored on its own, and a candidate can pass one and fail the other.
That sounds like a convenience. In practice it exposed something the combined score used to hide: candidates were not failing on code knowledge. They were failing on arithmetic.
The numbers TDLR publishes
TDLR reports exam statistics every fiscal year. For fiscal year 2025:
| Portion | Tested | Passed | Pass rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Journeyman Calculations | 6,328 | 1,301 | 20.6 percent |
| Journeyman NEC Knowledge | 5,731 | 1,402 | 24.5 percent |
| Master Calculations | 3,946 | 753 | 19.1 percent |
| Master NEC Knowledge | 3,472 | 771 | 22.2 percent |
Across every Texas electrical exam, 26,303 attempts produced 6,181 passes. That is a 23.5 percent pass rate, down from 26.4 percent the year before.
Read the calculations rows again. More people sit the calculations portion than the knowledge portion, and fewer of them pass. The hardest, highest-volume part of becoming a licensed electrician in Texas is the math.
What each portion contains
PSI publishes the content outline for both portions. The knowledge portion runs 56 scored items in 130 minutes. The calculations portion runs 24 scored items in 110 minutes.
Notice the pacing. The knowledge portion gives you a little over two minutes per question. The calculations portion gives you more than four and a half. That is not generosity. It is a signal about the length of the problems.
On the master exam the gap is wider still: 70 knowledge items in 150 minutes against 30 calculation items in 170 minutes. Nearly six minutes a question.
The subject areas, weighted
The knowledge portion draws from ten subject areas. Two of them carry the most weight by a clear margin: branch circuit conductors, and services with service equipment and separately derived systems.
The calculations portion is weighted differently. Services and separately derived systems is the largest single block, followed by motors and generators. Branch circuit calculations come third.
That ordering is worth internalizing. On the knowledge side, branch circuits are where the questions live. On the calculations side, services and motors are.
One reference, and rules about it
The reference list for every Texas electrical exam is a single book: the National Electrical Code. No statute, no administrative rules, no textbook.
The exam is open book, and the restrictions on that book are specific. Soft-bound only. No loose-leaf, no spiral binding. No handbook edition, only the code itself. Tabs are permitted, but only tabs manufactured by the publisher.
That last restriction catches people. The testing authority restricts tabs to those manufactured by the publisher. Confirm the current wording in the candidate information bulletin, which is dated and is the authority on this. If you have spent a month building a personal tab system out of index flags, it does not come into the room with you.
You can still learn the tabbing strategy. You just have to execute it with legal tabs.
The instruction that governs every calculation
One line in the bulletin decides how you answer:
When responding to the test questions, do not consider code exceptions or optional calculation methods unless the test question specifically directs you to consider them.
PSI Candidate Information Bulletin, TDLR Electricians
Working electricians lose points here. In the field you reach for the optional method because it is faster and it is legal. On the exam it is wrong unless the question asks for it. The standard method is the answer.
Retakes
Because the portions are scored separately, a failed portion can be retaken without repeating the one you passed. Each retake carries its own fee.
With 20,122 failures across all Texas electrical exams in one year, retakes are not an edge case. They are most of the volume.