Electrical Engineer Salary in Illinois 2026,
$107,860 Median | BLS Data by City

Illinois electrical engineers earn a median $107,860 a year, $51.85 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $87,360 and $131,960 and a full range of $75,470 to $164,290. That is 10.6% below the $120,630 national median, one of the larger negative gaps for a professional occupation in this state.

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin at $113,520, then Rockford at $112,350, Decatur at $103,030, Springfield at $101,940 and Peoria at $101,500. Rockford running level with Chicago is the notable row — its aerospace and precision manufacturing cluster supports electrical engineering work that pays like a major metro.

Only for work that must be sealed. Illinois's industrial exemption means engineers designing products inside a manufacturing company do not need a licence, and most Illinois electrical engineers never obtain one. The IDFPR Professional Engineer licence is required for power distribution, building electrical systems and public infrastructure design — which, given Illinois's data centre and grid workload, is a growing share of the market.

Sector mix. National electrical engineering pay is set heavily by semiconductor, aerospace and defence electronics employers, and Illinois has comparatively little of any of them. What Illinois has instead is utility, industrial controls, building systems and equipment engineering — solid, stable work that has never commanded the premiums the electronics sectors do. A location quotient of 0.70 alongside a below-median wage reflects a state with a narrower slice of the profession, not a weaker one.

Increasingly, yes — more so than the state's low licensure rate implies. Illinois's growth areas are data centre power, transmission and distribution upgrades and building electrical systems, and all of them require sealed designs. A licensed electrical engineer in Illinois sits in a much smaller pool than an unlicensed one, and the licence is the ordinary route from the state median of $107,860 to the $131,960 seventy-fifth percentile.

Power and controls, not electronics. The state's employers are utilities and transmission operators, controls and automation integrators serving its manufacturing base, aerospace and precision manufacturers around Rockford, equipment makers downstate, and the consulting engineers designing building electrical systems and the collar counties' data centres. That mix produces steady demand and a wage distribution centred at $107,860 rather than at the electronics-driven national figure.

It is a state median for a sector mix that may not be yours. An electrical engineer in Illinois doing protection and controls for a utility, one doing data centre power design for a consulting firm and one doing product electronics at a manufacturer face three different pay markets under one code. The Chicago figure of $113,520 and the Rockford figure of $112,350 are better anchors than the state number if your work sits in either of those markets.

It has created a genuine bidding market for licensed power design capability in the collar counties. Data centre electrical design is schedule-driven, high-capacity and must be sealed, so it competes directly for the small pool of Illinois PEs who can do it — usually with premium rates rather than base-salary increases. It is the clearest current route from the Illinois median of $107,860 toward the $131,960 seventy-fifth percentile and beyond, and it did not exist at this scale five years ago.