Civil Engineer Salary in Illinois 2026:
$99,760 Median

Illinois civil engineers earn a median $99,760 a year, $47.96 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $79,650 and $125,990 and a full range of $69,590 to $157,410. That sits 1.1% below the $100,840 national median, effectively level with the US market.

Springfield at $105,750, then Chicago-Naperville-Elgin at $100,160, Champaign-Urbana at $98,910, Bloomington at $97,070 and Decatur at $96,170. Fewer than ten thousand dollars separate the top and bottom of that list, which makes Illinois one of the flatter states in the country for this occupation.

Through the Board of Professional Engineers at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. The sequence is an ABET-accredited engineering degree, the Fundamentals of Engineering examination to become an engineer intern, the required period of qualifying experience under a licensed engineer, and then the Principles and Practice of Engineering examination. Illinois licences renew on a set cycle with continuing professional development.

A separate licence, issued by its own Illinois board, that is distinct from and additional to the Professional Engineer licence. Illinois is one of very few states to maintain it, and the City of Chicago's building code reserves defined structural design work for SE holders. For a structurally inclined civil engineer in Illinois, the SE is a genuine second credential step rather than an optional letter after the name.

It removes tax from the comparison entirely. The same 4.95% applies statewide and no Illinois city levies a wage tax, so Springfield's $105,750 and Chicago's $100,160 can be weighed on cost of living and project type alone. Given how much cheaper housing is downstate, the compressed metro table understates how much better the downstate public-sector offer often is in net terms.

Because the workload is public and the pay follows public schedules. A large share of Illinois civil engineering is IDOT programme work, municipal water and wastewater, and rail and freight infrastructure — all procured competitively and all benchmarked against published rates. That produces a narrow, stable distribution rather than the boom-and-bust premiums seen in states dominated by private development.

It undersells the SE tier. SOC 17-2051 covers all civil engineers together, and Illinois's Structural Engineer licence holders — a small, separately licensed group whose signature Chicago's code specifically requires — are not broken out. If you are on the structural track in Chicago, the state median of $99,760 is the wrong anchor; read the $125,990 seventy-fifth percentile as closer to the relevant market.

It trades ceiling for stability and adds pension value the wage figure ignores. IDOT and municipal engineering posts in Illinois pay on published schedules with defined steps, cap lower than consulting practice, and carry state or municipal retirement participation that a private consulting salary does not. An Illinois public-sector engineer at the state median of $99,760 and a consultant at the same figure are not on comparable total packages, and the gap runs in the public employee's favour more often than the wage table suggests.