Harris County has the deepest electrical pool in America, and most of it is apprentices 39,142 licensed electrical individuals in one county. Three quarters of them are apprentices, which changes what the number means for a schedule.
2026-09-10
Harris County, Texas holds 39,142 current electrical licences — the largest single-county electrical register in the American Trades Index. But the headline number is not the number you schedule against.
29,652 of them, 75.8%, are tier-1 apprentices. The fully credentialed workforce — journeymen, masters and intermediates — is 7,971 :
Apprentice — 29,652 Journeyman — 5,664 Master — 1,758 Intermediate — 549 Contractor / business — 1,519 That distinction is the whole reason to read a register rather than a total. A fit-out crewed on journeymen draws from 5,664 people in the largest electrical market in the country, not from 39,000. Apprentices are real supply — they are the pipeline, and a market with 29,652 of them is a market that is replacing itself — but they cannot be counted as interchangeable with the credentialed workers a schedule actually depends on.
What "current" means here, exactly
Texas publishes no status field on this register. ATI infers that a licence is current from a future expiry date, which is a weaker claim than a state that publishes an active status, and it is the reason this market carries a medium confidence rather than high. Read 39,142 as "licences not yet expired", not as "people confirmed working today", and do not compare it directly against a state that publishes status.
What Texas can compare
Texas licenses at the state level, so ATI can observe supply across nine trades in Harris County — electrical, plumbing, HVAC, boiler, elevator, fire sprinkler, appliance, electrical sign and well drilling. That is unusual: some states license municipally, and there the honest answer is that local supply is unknown rather than low.
Depth is the difference between a schedule and a hope. Tier is the difference between depth and a headline.
Explore the market on the Index .
The American Trades Index