South Carolina to Vermont: journeyman electrician license reciprocity

Vermont issues a statewide Journeyman Electrician license through the Electricians' Licensing Board within the Division of Fire Safety. A new applicant must show completion of a Vermont registered electrical apprenticeship or equivalent training and experience acceptable to the board (an apprenticeship served in another state may be recognized under 26 V.S.A. s. 907), then pass the Prov-administered exam ($80); the license costs $115 for a three-year term and renewal requires 15 hours of NEC instruction. Out-of-state journeymen have three routes without examination: a reciprocal license for residents of Maine and New Hampshire, a 'Universal' license under 26 V.S.A. s. 906(b)(2) for any journeyman licensed in good standing in another U.S. jurisdiction for at least three years, and, under the 2025 Safety Rules, recognition of a license from a National Electrical Reciprocal Alliance (NERA) member state held in good standing for one year. Vermont also licenses Type-S specialty journeymen and 12R military electricians, which are outside this level.

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.