South Carolina to New Mexico: journeyman electrician license reciprocity

New Mexico issues statewide journeyman certificates of competence through the Construction Industries Division (CID) of the Regulation and Licensing Department; PSI processes applications and administers the exams under contract. The residential and commercial journeyman electrician classification is EE-98J, which requires four years (8,000 hours) of experience gained within the ten years before application; a residential-only ER-1J and several two-year specialty journeyman classifications also exist. A new EE-98J applicant passes a two-part written exam (Part 1 Code, open book on the 2020 NEC; Part 2 Theory, closed book) and a practical exam, each with a 75% passing score. CID reciprocates only the EE-98J classification, with ten states. Certificates are active for three years, and EE-98J holders complete 16 hours of continuing education per three-year code cycle.

South Carolina has no state journeyman electrician license. The LLR Contractor's Licensing Board licenses mechanical contractors (entities qualified by an individual qualifying party) for electrical work over $10,000 and the Residential Builders Commission licenses residential electricians, and neither chapter of the contractor law creates a journeyman credential; an electrician who is not a contractor works under one of those licensees without any state license. The journeyman-level credential that does exist is the journeyman electrician card of the SC Mechanical Trades Certification Program, run since 1965 by the Municipal Association of South Carolina (the association of the state's cities) and, since January 1, 2026, by the Carolinas AGC Foundation; the program's own page says the card is not a license and must not be represented as one. Whether a card is needed depends on the city or county building department, and the local ordinances themselves is not stated in the board's published materials on this verification date. No reciprocity or out-of-state acceptance is published for the journeyman card, so an arriving journeyman should expect to document two years of experience, pay the $35 application fee and take the Prov exam if a local jurisdiction or employer requires the card; the card's master-level counterpart is what LLR accepts toward the state contractor licenses.