You get a journeyman plumber license by completing your state's supervised experience requirement — usually thousands of on-the-job hours logged as an apprentice — and then passing the state's journeyman exam.
There is no national journeyman license: each state board sets the hours, the classroom time and the test, and a few states have no journeyman rung at all.
Here is how the requirements actually break down.
What a journeyman license is
A journeyman plumber license is the middle credential on the plumbing ladder: the government-issued license that marks a plumber as fully trained — past the supervised apprentice stage and qualified to work on their own.
It is not an industry certification.
It comes from a licensing authority: a state board, a city or county licensing office, or an industry board in the states that license locally.
The classic pattern is one rung in a three-license ladder.
As of September 29, 2026, 24 states run the classic apprentice/trainee → journeyman → master ladder at the state level.
Texas shows the rung in its simplest form: the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners (TSBPE) licenses plumbers statewide, and Journeyman Plumber is one of its four licenses, between Tradesman Plumber-Limited and Master Plumber.
Two variants keep the journeyman rung but change what sits above it.
Five states — Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma and South Dakota — top their journeyman license with an individual contractor license instead of a master.
Four — Alaska, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington — license a journeyman-level plumber with no state master license at all.
Some states add rungs instead: Utah licenses plumbers in five classifications — Apprentice, Journeyman, Master, Residential Journeyman and Residential Master.
This page is about the license: the hours, the exam and the legal scope.
The person and the career are a different question — our journeyman plumber career guide covers the work and the pay, and our plumbing license requirements guide walks the whole apprentice-to-master ladder and the states that license locally.
Hours and classroom requirements
Start with the honest answer: there is no national number of hours.
Experience requirements and journeyman definitions are set state by state — no federal source defines them.
Every figure below is one jurisdiction's rule, stated exactly as that jurisdiction sets it.
The hours are usually logged in an apprenticeship first.
The U.S. Department of Labor recommends — but does not require — a minimum of 144 hours of related technical instruction per year of apprenticeship; each registered program's standards set the real numbers.
New Hampshire's plumbing apprenticeship, for one, is 8,000 hours (about 4 years) of on-the-job training plus 144 hours of related classroom instruction per year.
What individual states ask before you can sit the journeyman exam:
- Michigan — at least 6,000 hours over at least 3 years as an actively registered plumbing apprentice under a licensed master or journey plumber, and age 18 or older.
- Kentucky — 2 consecutive years as an apprentice plumber, or 1 year plus a department-approved course.
- Arkansas — 4 years' experience (or the equivalent) to sit the journeyman plumber exam.
- Utah (Residential Journeyman Plumber) — 6,000 hours as a licensed apprentice plus a 3-year approved education program (432+ classroom hours), or 12,000 hours of supervised experience.
The shared shape: thousands of supervised on-the-job hours over multiple years, usually with technical instruction running alongside.
Which hours count, how they are documented, and what substitutes — school, military service, out-of-state work — a board accepts are the state-by-state details to verify before you apply.
Every figure above is one state's rule
The exam
The written code exam is the core of the journeyman license.
Some states add a hands-on practical: plumbing license exams with a practical component were found in Texas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New Mexico and Utah — plus New Jersey's, at the master level — along with Montana's diagram-based practical and the local practicals in New York City and Omaha.
What the tests actually look like, state by state:
- Texas — TSBPE written exams are delivered by Pearson VUE, and journeyman and tradesman candidates coming from apprentice must also pass a hands-on practical exam at the board's Austin or Waco exam centre.
- Montana — the journeyman written exam is 100 multiple-choice questions on the 2021 Uniform Plumbing Code (as amended) plus board statutes and rules, open book, with a 3-hour limit; the practical is three virtual diagrams, limited to 2.5 hours.
- Louisiana — the Journeyman Plumber exam is an 80-question, 3-hour written exam on the 2021 International Plumbing Code and 2021 International Residential Code, plus a 1-hour practical; the application fee is $135 ($125 exam + $10 processing) and the initial license $50.
- Utah — journeyman candidates pass a written theory exam, which can be taken remotely via Prov/ExamRoom AI, and an in-person practical exam at a Utah Prov centre.
- Kentucky — applicants must score at least 75% on each portion of the journeyman exam, practical section included, and pay a $60 license fee.
Pass, and the ladder's next rung opens on the state's schedule — in Arkansas, a journeyman must hold the license one full year before sitting the master plumber exam.
What the master rung adds is covered in our master plumber guide.
What it lets you do
The license's core promise is independent work.
Clark County, Nevada, states it plainly: journeyman is the minimum level for working without supervision.
That is what employers are hiring when they post a journeyman position — a plumber who can run a service call, an installation or a repair on their own.
Everything beyond that core — whether a journeyman may pull permits, supervise helpers or sign off work for inspection — is written by the state board or local office that issued the license, and those rules differ across states.
One line the journeyman license does not cross: contracting.
In Georgia, Maine, Kentucky, Delaware, Montana, Wisconsin, Texas, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Connecticut and Rhode Island, the individual master (or equivalent) license is what lets a business contract for plumbing work — there is no separate state plumbing-contractor license.
The business layer belongs to the top rung, not the middle one.
Licenses also stop at the border.
There is no national journeyman license to transfer, and license-for-license reciprocity is the exception.
Where it exists for journeymen, it clusters in the Northwest and Plains: Montana reciprocates with Oregon, Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota; Oregon with Idaho and Montana; Washington with Idaho only; and North Dakota lists written agreements with South Dakota, Minnesota and Montana.
Everywhere else, moving means applying under the new state's rules — check with that state's board before you pack the van.
Once the license is in hand, the work is there: browse plumber jobs to see what contractors are hiring journeymen for right now.
States without a journeyman level
Four states license plumbers statewide with no journeyman rung at all:
- Illinois — the levels are the licensed apprentice plumber and the licensed plumber; there is no journeyman or master tier.
- Delaware — only a licensed master plumber may provide plumbing services; apprentices and journeymen work unlicensed under the supervision of a master plumber who employs them or works full time for the same business.
- New Jersey — the state licenses master plumbers and registers journeymen: the Master Plumbers Board takes applications for Registration as a Journeyman Plumber, which is a registration, not a license.
- North Carolina — there is no statewide journeyman or apprentice plumber license; Class I/II are contractor and technician classes, and unlicensed workers may work as W-2 employees of a licensed firm.
Seven more states have no state plumber license of any kind — Florida, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York and Wyoming — so cities, counties or an industry board license instead.
A "journeyman" credential there comes from the local authority, under the local rules: Clark County, Nevada's journeyman card, for example, is issued through the Nevada Board of Plumbing Examiners, an industry-founded board working in partnership with the county — not a state agency.
Ohio is a different edge case, and a verified one: the state licenses plumbing contractors, the businesses, only — there is no state-issued individual plumber license.
The map also has open patches our research could not confirm either way: Tennessee appears to have only a limited state plumber credential, with journeyman and master tiers handled locally; Pennsylvania appears to have no state plumber license, with cities and counties licensing instead; and Arizona, California, Mississippi and South Carolina appear to license plumbing contractors only, with no individual worker license.
None of that is verified — if you live in one of those states, treat it as a question for the state agency, not an answer.
Wherever you live, the work level exists even where the license title does not — what changes is who certifies that you are qualified and what the credential is called.
Start with your state licensing board, or the city or county office where licensing is local.
Career information, not legal advice. Licensing requirements change; confirm the current rules with your state licensing board — or the city or county office where licensing is local — before you apply.