Idaho electricians kept failing this exam. Turns out, it wasn’t fair
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Idaho's switch to a national electrician exam caused pass rates to drop to 18%.
- The state will launch a new, Idaho-specific test with PSI in 30-60 days.
- Exam fees waived for applicants who failed since September under current system.
The first time Jose Arriaga, of Nampa, failed the journeyman electrician’s exam, he blamed himself for not studying enough. The second time he failed it, he thought maybe it was because his English wasn’t that great. For his third try, his employer paid for him to take a test preparation course.
He still failed it.
That’s when Arriaga, who has been an electrician for 10 years, became suspicious that it was the test, not him.
“It was hard to do it (the test) because some of the answers weren’t in the book,” he said, referring to the National Electrical Code book that applicants are allowed to use during the test. “They tricked you a lot. You try to find the question in the book, and it was hard to find them in the book.”
Arriaga was right. It wasn’t him; it was the test.
And he wasn’t alone.
Over the past year, since the state switched from an in-house test to a new national third-party vendor’s exam, the pass rate among the 655 electricians taking the journeyman’s exam for the first time was a cumulative 18%, according to a spreadsheet of the data shared with me.
“We were very closely monitoring the pass rate as we transitioned from the in-house exam to the national exam, and the numbers are not trending the way that they should be,” Amy Lorenzo, a bureau chief with the Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses, told me in a phone interview.
Because of that, the division is revising the journeyman electrician exam.
In May, the Idaho Electrical Board unanimously approved a partnership with the testing firm PSI to create a new, Idaho-specific test. This new exam is expected to be finalized within the next 30-60 days.
Additionally, the state is waiving the exam fee for all applicants, such as Arriaga, who have not successfully passed the national exam since its launch in September. The state is contacting these applicants directly, Lorenzo said.
Problems with the journeyman electrician test
For years, the state had been doing the journeyman electrician’s test itself, but the Idaho Electrical Board voted several years ago to contract with third-party vendors to create a test and administer it.
“We as an agency want to get out of the business of administering exams,” Lorenzo said. “Those should really be written by qualified professionals.”
So last year, the state began contracting with the National Association of State Contractors Licensing Agencies, or NASCLA, to create a test for journeyman electricians and with PSI to administer the exams.
The state anticipated some dip as part of the transition, Lorenzo said, but the pass rates with the new exam were much lower than expected.
Month after month, pass rates were unacceptably low, dipping as low as 6% in November among the 35 electricians who took the test, which means just two people passed the test.
Electricians retaking the test were faring marginally better, with a cumulative pass rate of 30%, but that was still 358 electricians failing the retake.
Lorenzo said that whenever you’re administering a test like this, you don’t want pass rates to be too high or too low. Scores that are too high suggest the test is too easy, too low shows it’s too hard.
Clearly, the NASCLA exam was too hard.
The state had received several complaints that the NASCLA exam was requiring six to seven resources, including OSHA and fire code requirements, far beyond the one or two resources that the state was expecting.
The NASCLA exam gives applicants five hours to answer 110 questions, which comes out to less than three minutes per question.
Arriaga said that simply wasn’t enough time to look up answers in the code book and do calculations, if necessary. Questions about OSHA regulations wouldn’t be found in the electrical code book.
Not only that, Lorenzo said, NASCLA has been using an outdated version of the test, using the 2017 National Electrical Code, while test takers were showing up with the 2023 code book.
Bob McLaughlin, public information officer for DOPL, said that while DOPL and the Electrical Board thoroughly reviewed the decision to use a third-party exam, the specific test questions were kept confidential by NASCLA to ensure exam security. This prevented the state from reviewing or editing the questions before the exam was administered.
Moving forward, by creating a new exam with PSI, the state will now have greater control over the content and can ensure it is more relevant to Idaho electricians, according to McLaughlin.
McLaughlin said changes weren’t made earlier because it takes time to properly evaluate a new exam’s effectiveness. The state needed a large enough group of test-takers to see a clear pattern, and the Electrical Board, which makes these decisions, only meets quarterly.
The state identified the issues earlier this year and worked with NASCLA to make improvements, McLaughlin said, but because NASCLA owns the exam, there were limits to what the state could change.
By May, the board decided it was better to create its own exam with PSI to ensure it is relevant to what Idaho electricians need to know.
Need for electricians in booming Idaho economy
This all comes at a time when Idaho needs journeyman electricians.
“We’re booming here in the Treasure Valley, and we don’t have enough journeymen,” John Calamaro, a journeyman electrician and Arriaga’s supervisor, told me in a phone interview.
He said the shortage is particularly acute due to major projects like Micron, which are “sucking up a lot of journeymen.”
That’s something the state recognizes.
“We want to ensure that we are fostering Idaho’s economy and our talent pipeline,” Lorenzo said. “So reducing this barrier is something that I am very, very focused on.”
The shortage affects contractors’ ability to bid on jobs, as they must maintain specific journeyman-to-apprentice ratios or risk penalties from the state, Calamaro said.
Residential jobs require one journeyman supervising at most four apprentices, while commercial jobs require one journeyman for every two apprentices.
To go from apprentice to journeyman is already a laborious, multiyear process, Calamaro said.
Before even getting to the journeyman exam, an electrician needs 8,000 hours of on-the-job experience, completed schooling and four years of apprenticeships with certifications along the way.
Moving forward with new electrician exam
Lorenzo said that by working directly with PSI to develop a more targeted in-house exam, the state expects to reduce the overall cost of testing.
Currently, the fee for each person to take the NASCLA exam is $135: Test-takers pay $75, and the Electrical Board covers the remaining $60 from its own funds, according to McLaughlin.
The cost of the new test could be closer or even below the $75 cap, which would benefit both the state and the test-takers, Lorenzo said.
“The transition in house is actually going to reduce those expenses,” Lorenzo said. “We haven’t finalized the numbers exactly, but in the long term, this will actually be less costly to the applicant.”
Lorenzo said DOPL recognizes the need to not interfere too heavily with much-needed trades people entering the workforce, but the state still needs to make sure trades workers have a certain level of competence in order to protect the public.
“Our test should be testing on competencies and ensuring that we have highly qualified electricians,” Lorenzo said. “Our test itself should not be a barrier to licensure.”
For Arriaga, becoming a journeyman electrician means more money and more responsibility — and it would get him one step closer to fulfilling a dream.
“In the future, I maybe can get my own company, you know?” Arriaga said. “That’s the process. You can’t get a company without being a journeyman.”
Scott McIntosh is the opinion editor of the Idaho Statesman. You can email him at smcintosh@idahostatesman.com or call him at 208-377-6202. Sign up for the free weekly email newsletter The Idaho Way.
This story was originally published August 7, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
