How long it takes to get licensed: required hours by trade and state
Pick a license and a state: the calculator turns the hours the board requires into weeks and months at the number of hours a week you can train.
Cosmetology training in Texas
34 weeks
1,000 school hours at 30 h a week
| Required hours | 1,000 |
| Months at that pace | 7.7 |
| First-license fees | $181 |
Compiled by Radif Partners · How the totals are built · fees read on board pages and exam handbooks, October 20, 2026
The time a license takes depends mostly on the trade. A cosmetology license needs 1,000 to 1,600 school hours depending on the state, about 34 weeks for the 1,000 hours Texas requires at 30 hours a week. A barber license runs up to 1,800 hours in Ohio, an esthetician license from 220 hours in Florida to 1,000 in Alabama. Real estate courses take 60 to 180 hours, a few weeks to a few months part time. The slowest license is the journeyman electrician: 8,000 hours of supervised work in most states priced, about 3.8 years at 40 hours a week. The fastest are the notary commission, with no required hours in 12 of 20 states, and the insurance producer license, with no state hour figure in 18 of 27. The weekly paces used here are the site's default assumptions, not rules: set your own in the calculator.
Hours are set by the state, weeks by you
Boards fix a number of hours, never a number of weeks. A cosmetology school may run a full-time program and a part-time evening program for the same 1,000 hours, and the second takes much longer. To turn hours into calendar time, this site applies a default weekly pace to each trade: 15 hours for real estate, 30 hours for cosmetology, 30 hours for esthetician, 30 hours for barber, 15 hours for insurance agent, 20 hours for pharmacy technician, 20 hours for CNA, 3 hours for notary, 15 hours for CDL, 40 hours for electrician. Those paces are our own assumptions about a common schedule, chosen so the examples stay comparable; no state publishes them and no board requires them. Enter the hours you can actually give each week in the calculator and the weeks change with it.
The hours also measure different things from one trade to the next. For cosmetology, barbering and esthetics they are school clock hours; for real estate and insurance, hours of approved pre-licensing courses; for the electrician, hours of supervised work on the job rather than hours of study. The table below keeps that distinction in its second column.
| License | What is counted | States with a figure | Lowest | Median | Highest | Median in weeks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real estate agent | pre-licensing course hours | 20 of 20 | 60 (Connecticut) | 84 | 180 (Texas) | 6 at 15 h |
| Cosmetologist | school hours | 15 of 15 | 1,000 (California) | 1,500 | 1,600 (Washington) | 50 at 30 h |
| Esthetician | school hours | 16 of 16 | 220 (Florida) | 600 | 1,000 (Alabama) | 20 at 30 h |
| Barber | school hours | 9 of 10 | 1,000 (Alabama) | 1,500 | 1,800 (Ohio) | 50 at 30 h |
| Insurance agent (life and health) | pre-licensing course hours | 9 of 27 | 16 (Georgia) | 40 | 100 (Colorado) | 3 at 15 h |
| Pharmacy technician | training hours | 1 of 24 | 520 (Washington) | 520 | 520 (Washington) | 26 at 20 h |
| Certified nurse aide (CNA) | training program hours | 9 of 18 | 75 (Colorado) | 100 | 175 (Missouri) | 5 at 20 h |
| Notary public | education hours | 3 of 20 | 3 (Florida) | 3 | 6 (California) | 1 at 3 h |
| Commercial driver (Class A CDL) | behind-the-wheel hours required by the state | 1 of 14 | 15 (California) | 15 | 15 (California) | 1 at 15 h |
| Journeyman electrician | hours of supervised work | 7 of 9 | 8,000 (California) | 8,000 | 8,000 (Wisconsin) | 200 at 40 h |
The beauty licenses: the longest school programs
Cosmetology carries the heaviest classroom requirement of any license here. The median is 1,500 hours, and California, New York, Texas require the lowest figure, 1,000; Washington asks the most, 1,600. Texas lets a student sit the written exam after 900 of its 1,000 hours, so the exam can overlap the last weeks of school. Barbering is similar, with a median of 1,500 hours and Ohio at 1,800; North Carolina adds a twelve-month apprenticeship after its 1,528 school hours, and New York sets no school hour figure, offering a two-year apprenticeship route instead. Esthetics is shorter but spread wide: 220 hours in Florida against 1,000 in Alabama, the gap between a few weeks and most of a year at 30 hours a week.
Training time for another license and state
Real estate training in Texas
12 weeks
| Required hours | 180 |
| Months at that pace | 2.8 |
| First-license fees | $301 |
The slowest license: years of supervised work
A journeyman electrician license is earned on the job. 7 of the 9 states priced require 8,000 hours of supervised work, about 200 weeks at a full-time 40 hours, or roughly 3.8 years. Texas lets an applicant take the exam after 7,000 of those hours. Alabama's statute defines the journeyman without an experience-hour minimum, which is why it shows no figure. Because the hours are worked under a licensed electrician rather than studied in a classroom, the calendar depends on finding steady supervised work, and a slow season stretches it. The electrician page covers the fees.
The fastest licenses: notaries, insurance and pharmacy technicians
Most notary commissions need no training at all: 12 of the 20 states priced set zero hours, and the longest course in the data is 6 hours in California. Florida and Pennsylvania each ask for 3 hours. Insurance producers come next. 18 of the 27 states priced publish no pre-licensing hour figure for a life and health license, several because the requirement was repealed: North Carolina ended it on October 1, 2025, and Washington in July 2023. Where hours remain, they run from 16 in Georgia to 100 in Colorado. Pharmacy technician registration rarely has an hour count: only Washington sets one, 520 hours of on-the-job training, while Texas requires a national certification exam instead of hours.
CNA and CDL: a federal floor, then the state
Federal rules set a nurse aide training program at no fewer than 75 hours, including at least 16 hours of supervised practical training (42 CFR 483.152). States may ask for more, and 9 of the 18 states priced publish their own figure, from 75 in Colorado to 175 in Missouri. At 20 hours a week, the longest program takes about 9 weeks. For a Class A CDL, entry-level driver training has been required of first-time applicants since February 7, 2022, but the federal rule sets no minimum number of hours for theory or behind-the-wheel training (49 CFR 380.609), and the theory assessment must be passed with a score of at least 80 percent. California is the exception in our data, with a state minimum of 15 hours behind the wheel.
Training is rarely the only wait. Exams must be booked, fingerprints processed and applications reviewed, and some licenses cannot be issued until a sponsor or employer is in place. The state overview lists the fees that come with each license once the hours are done.