CPA Salary in Chicago, IL 2026,
$82,360 Median | BLS + Market Data

Chicago CPAs earn a BLS median of $82,360/yr, or $39.60 an hour, across the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro, with a published band from $59,530 to $134,100. That is 1.6% below the US median for accountants and auditors. The metro employs 41,360 accountants and auditors, among the largest such workforces in the country.

Slightly — the metro runs 2.7% above the Illinois statewide figure, a narrower gap than most people expect given how much of the state's professional accounting work sits in the Chicago region. Among peer metros Chicago sits below Houston at $85,090 and Austin at $83,120, and just above Dallas at $82,620, Miami at $80,920 and Phoenix at $80,820.

Yes, and this page's headline figure does not isolate that. BLS reports one occupation, Accountants and Auditors, and does not publish a separate licensed-CPA wage. The licence matters most in public practice, where it is a condition of signing off work and of promotion past a certain grade, and in corporate technical accounting and controllership. It matters least in general industry accounting posts, where experience and sector knowledge often price higher than the credential. The level table on this page reflects that ordering.

Through two bodies. The Illinois Board of Examiners evaluates education and determines eligibility to sit the Uniform CPA Examination; the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation issues the licence once the examination and experience requirements are met. Illinois requires 150 semester hours of qualifying education, passage of all examination sections, and documented experience verified by a licensee. The credential is a state licence — Chicago issues nothing of its own, and mobility provisions let Illinois CPAs practise across most other states.

The financial-services cluster, which is genuinely distinctive here. Chicago's derivatives exchanges, proprietary trading firms, asset managers and the accounting functions that support them pay at the top of this band, because the work involves daily valuation, complex instruments and regulatory reporting that most corporate accounting never touches. Large corporate controllership across the metro's headquarters base is the next tier. Public practice pays competitively at manager level and above, but its early-career rates are what pull the overall metro figure down toward the national average.

It is tempting to read a below-national median in a market of 41,360 accountants as underpayment. It is better read as completeness. Small metros publish medians shaped by whichever employers happen to dominate them; a market this large contains the full distribution — Big Four assurance, exchange and trading-firm accounting, corporate headquarters finance, university and health system controllership, municipal finance, regional practice, and a long tail of small firms and seasonal tax work. The median of everything tends toward the national figure by construction. The band, running from $59,530 to $134,100, is the more informative number on this page.

Chicago is a derivatives centre, and that has a specific effect on accounting pay that other large metros do not share. Exchange operators, clearing organisations, proprietary trading firms and futures commission merchants all run accounting functions that must value complex positions daily and report to a regulatory regime most accountants never encounter. The people who can do that are scarce, they are recruited from a small pool, and they price accordingly. It is the clearest local reason the 90th percentile here sits well above what a general corporate accounting career reaches.

Illinois requires 150 semester hours to sit for licensure, which in practice means a fifth year of study or a master's degree before a candidate can complete the credential. That requirement, combined with a national decline in accounting graduates, has thinned the pipeline into public practice across the country and this metro is not exempt. The visible consequence in this data is a wide gap between the 10th percentile at $59,530 and the median: entry-level accounting posts that do not require the licence remain plentiful and modestly paid, while licensed candidates at two to five years of experience are the part of the market employers here compete hardest for.