A few years back...maybe 5 or 6 years, In Broward county (south of Palm beach county) you were required to have 1 Journeyman electrician for every 3 helpers on the job site. I'm sure other countys were or maybe still are like that.
In recent years they dropped that requirement and now the only license required is that of the qualifier of the company ( who is almost never on the job)
Don't get me wrong, a Journeymans card still means something, especially for service type company's and is used mostly as a base measurement to see if a potential employee knows what he is doing or not. Journeyman do make more per hour than an unlicensed electrician/helper does in most cases.
I agree, this is bad news for the trade and affects the pay scale in a big way. You have contractors hiring 15 unlicensed guys who barely speak english to wire up new houses, they are the lowest bidder for the contract since now the labor cost is cut in half and they get every job. Now the contractor who actually pays his employees a decent wage and has benefits has to look at a $300 profit or less on a week long job just to compete.
What is the contractors choices ? to reduce labor cost ( pay employees less) or try to find a different market where he can make more profit for the same amount of effort.
Bottom line is, Licensing although it is a pain to jump through all the hoops is what keeps our (employees and contractors)pay/profits up.
