Electrician Salary in Illinois 2026,
$99,560 Median | BLS Data by City

Illinois electricians earn a median $99,560 a year, $47.87 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $73,520 and $117,460 and a full range of $49,240 to $123,660. That is 57.6% above the $63,190 national median — the widest state premium for any trade on this site.

Kankakee at $105,500, then Chicago-Naperville-Elgin at $102,350, Champaign-Urbana at $100,320, Rockford at $93,280 and Springfield at $84,780. Kankakee edging Chicago is a small-sample effect in a market with heavy industrial and logistics construction, but the broader pattern is clear: the northern Illinois metros within reach of Chicago-area collective agreements pay above the statewide median of $99,560, and downstate Springfield does not.

No — Illinois has no statewide electrician licence, which puts it in a small minority of states. The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation licenses many trades but not this one. Licensing is handled municipally: Chicago and other home-rule municipalities run their own supervising electrician and contractor licence schemes with their own examinations, so requirements differ by jurisdiction. What travels across Illinois is a completed apprenticeship and, in practice, union membership.

A flat 4.95% on all wage income, with a $2,925 personal exemption allowance in 2026 and no local income tax anywhere in Illinois including Chicago. For a trade with a median of $99,560 and a ninetieth percentile of $123,660, that flat structure is materially more favourable than a graduated state would be — and overtime, which is substantial in commercial construction, is taxed at the same 4.95% rather than at an escalating rate.

Union density in the Chicago construction market. The IBEW agreements covering commercial and industrial electrical work in northern Illinois set journeyman scales far above the national open-shop average, and because the Chicago metro accounts for a large majority of Illinois electrical employment, those rates dominate the state figure. That is also why the band is so wide: the $49,240 tenth percentile reflects apprentices and non-union residential work, while the $117,460 seventy-fifth reflects organised commercial construction.

That the meaningful credential is the apprenticeship, not a card from Springfield. Because Illinois regulates electrical work municipally, an electrician's ability to work across the state depends on the local jurisdiction's rules and, far more practically, on membership of a local union and its dispatch. Chicago runs its own supervising electrician licensing through the city; other home-rule municipalities have their own. For someone entering the trade, the decision that matters is which apprenticeship to join, not which licence to obtain.

The state median is dominated by organised commercial construction in the Chicago metro and does not describe the whole trade. A non-union residential electrician downstate is working in a market that looks much more like the national one, closer to the $73,520 twenty-fifth percentile than the $99,560 median. The annualised figure also assumes steady work, and construction electrical work is project-based, with layoffs between jobs a normal feature of the union model.

Data centres and the energy transition. The Chicago metro has become one of the largest data centre construction markets in the country, and that work is electrically intensive, schedule-driven and almost entirely organised. Alongside it, Illinois's clean energy legislation has funded grid, storage and renewable interconnection work. Both favour journeymen with industrial controls, instrumentation and medium-voltage experience — which is the practical route from the $99,560 median toward the $123,660 ninetieth percentile.