Electrician licensing in Massachusetts

Massachusetts opens exactly one reciprocity door, and it is a narrow one. If you already hold a New Hampshire journeyman or master license, you can come in on paper alone with no Massachusetts exam. Everyone else tests. There is a catch that stops most travelers cold. The New Hampshire license counts only if you originally earned it by passing New Hampshire's own exam.

If your New Hampshire card itself came in by reciprocity or endorsement from a third state, it does not qualify here. The journeyman route is application-only through the state's online portal: a $208 non-refundable fee, a New Hampshire board verification letter carrying the board seal, a notarized CORI form, and a passport-style photo.

The board reviews a complete file in at least ten business days, so budget two to four weeks once you add the time to get the New Hampshire letter. Master reciprocity costs $310 and asks for more. You need a current Massachusetts journeyman license, or a journeyman reciprocity application filed alongside it, plus proof you completed the 150-hour Massachusetts master program and a good-standing letter, issued within the last 90 days, for every license you hold anywhere.

There is no reciprocity for a business or company license.

No. Massachusetts has no temporary, provisional, or work-while-pending permit of any kind, not for reciprocity applicants and not for exam candidates. Until your license number actually issues, you cannot legally do electrical work in the state. Fees are the only thing that gets waived. Veterans, active military, and their spouses skip the state processing charge under the Valor Act, but that waives the cost, not the license itself.

The one lawful way to work unlicensed is as an employed apprentice under a licensed employer, supervised one-to-one by a journeyman, and that is apprentice-scope work at apprentice pay, not a journeyman placement. The honest plan is simple: file first, and start on the tools only when your number shows up in the state's license lookup.

If you are testing, the journeyman license (Class B) is built on three things: 600 hours of Board-approved schooling, a 15-hour code-update class, and 8,000 hours of work over at least four years under a licensed Massachusetts journeyman. Your employer certifies those hours on the state's Form 272, and they count if they fall within 20 years of your application.

The master license (Class A) comes later. You hold a Massachusetts journeyman license, add at least a year of experience, and complete 150 hours of Board-approved schooling. Testing runs through PSI. As of mid-2025 every application goes in online, and mailed ones come back. Once PSI approves you, it emails an authorization notice and you schedule online or by phone, any day of the week.

Approval stays good for 12 months. The journeyman application-and-exam fee totals $226, or $195 if the Valor Act waiver applies. Master runs $276, or $210 waived. A retest is $135. The journeyman exam is two parts, open-book against the code: 80 questions in 180 minutes, then a 30-question applied section in 60 minutes, and you need 70 percent on each.

When you pass, you pay the license fee at the test center, $104 for journeyman and $155 for master.

The electricians' board does not register apprentices. You work lawfully without a personal license because you are employed by a licensed person or firm, and your supervising licensee logs your hours on Form 272, the same hours that build toward your journeyman license. The ratio is firm: one apprentice per journeyman, which is a real crew constraint, not a formality.

There is also a formal Registered Apprenticeship run by a separate state agency, the Division of Apprentice Standards. That route is started by the employer or program sponsor, not by you, and it carries a $35 annual ID-card fee, with the card kept on you while you work. Whether that registration is mandatory for every electrical apprentice, as opposed to the employment-based path above, is not spelled out on the board's pages, so confirm with the board which one applies to your job.

One statewide license covers every job site in Massachusetts. No city or county runs its own electrician license, so there is nothing to re-test or re-license town to town. What is local is permits and inspections: each municipality's Inspector of Wires is the authority on the job, but that is about the work, not about you carrying a second card.

The journeyman (Class B) license is the worker credential. With it you can be hired by any licensed employer, and you can even work solo under your own name. The contractor tier is different. To bid work, contract with the public under a business name, employ electricians, or be the licensee of record who pulls permits, you need a master (Class A) license plus, for a company, the A1 electrical business license.

Only a master can hold that business license. A journeyman cannot run work under a DBA or a corporation, LLC, or LLP, that is master-and-business territory. As a traveling electrician taking W-2 work, the journeyman license is the one that matters, and the business license is your employer's to hold.