When you start looking into an electrical apprenticeship, you run straight into a wall of initials, and most pages throw them around like you already know them. So let's slow down and go through who each one is and how they fit together. Once you see the structure, the whole process makes a lot more sense, including a few things that trip people up later.
The two sides: IBEW and NECA
Everything starts with two organizations that sit on opposite sides of the table and, in this case, work together.
- IBEW stands for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. It's the union: the organization that represents electrical workers themselves. When people talk about "getting into the IBEW," they mean becoming a union electrician.
- NECA stands for the National Electrical Contractors Association. It's the other side: the association that represents the electrical contractors, the companies that actually employ electricians.
Labor and management. Workers and employers. Normally you'd expect those two to just negotiate against each other, and they do. But a long time ago they decided that training the next generation of electricians was something they were better off doing together.
What they built together: the NJATC, now the electrical training ALLIANCE
In 1941, the IBEW and NECA jointly created the NJATC, the National Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee. The word "joint" is the important one: it means the training is run by labor and management together, not by one side alone. The NJATC's job was to build a single, standardized training program so an apprentice in one part of the country learns to the same standard as one anywhere else.
In 2014, the NJATC changed its name to the electrical training ALLIANCE (you'll sometimes see it shortened to etA). Same organization, same mission, new name. This is the part that confuses people the most, because older study guides and forum posts still say "NJATC" while newer ones say "electrical training ALLIANCE." They're talking about the same thing.
This national body is the one that owns the curriculum and, the part you care about, the aptitude test. That's why the test is the same wherever you take it: it comes from one national source. Today the electrical training ALLIANCE is the largest program of its kind, having trained over 350,000 apprentices to journeyman.
Where you actually apply: your local JATC
Here's the piece that matters most on a practical level. You don't apply to the IBEW, and you don't apply to the electrical training ALLIANCE. You apply to your local JATC.
A JATC is a Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee, the local version of that same labor-plus-management setup. There are more than 200 of them across the US and Canada, and each one is run jointly by a local IBEW union and a local NECA chapter for its own area. (You'll occasionally see it written as AJATC, for Area JATC, or under a training-center name like NIETC. Same idea.)
Your local JATC is who you deal with the whole way through:
- It takes your application.
- It schedules and gives you the aptitude test.
- It runs your interview and ranks applicants.
- It sets some of its own rules within the national framework.
That last point explains something a lot of applicants find frustrating.
Why this actually matters to you
Once you understand that there's a national body and a local one, a confusing part of the process clicks into place: the test is national, but the rules around it are partly local.
The aptitude test itself is set by the electrical training ALLIANCE, so it's the same 33 math and 36 reading questions' worth of test no matter where you sit it. But the details that affect you are often decided by your local JATC, and they can differ from one to the next: exactly how scores are used, the interview, how the ranked list works, and even how long you wait to retake if you don't qualify.
So when you read advice online, keep this filter in mind: anything about the test itself is safe to trust from a national source, but anything about applying, scoring cutoffs, or retaking should be double-checked against your local JATC, because that's the office that actually makes those calls for you. (We get into the retake side of this in how long you have to wait to retake the test.)
The short glossary
- IBEW – International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The union (the workers).
- NECA – National Electrical Contractors Association. The contractors (the employers).
- NJATC – National Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee. The national training body created in 1941, renamed in 2014.
- electrical training ALLIANCE (etA) – the current name for the NJATC. Owns the national curriculum and the aptitude test.
- JATC – your local Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee. Where you apply, test, and interview.
Since the aptitude test comes from the national body, it looks the same wherever you take it, which means you can practice for it no matter which local you're applying to. That's what the free VLTG practice test is for: a full-length version built to match the real thing, with a breakdown of which skills to work on.
Take the free practice test →: see where you stand before you apply to your local.
Related: How long to wait to retake the test · How to study without wasting time · FAQ
Sources: electrical training ALLIANCE, "About Us"; IBEW Local 1245 and EC&M coverage of the 2014 NJATC-to-electrical-training-ALLIANCE transition; NECA and local JATC descriptions of the joint labor-management training structure. Local JATC policies vary, so confirm specifics with your own local.