Occupational Therapist Salary in Illinois 2026,
$99,700 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Illinois figure is $99,700 a year, or $47.93 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $73,360 at the 10th percentile to $132,180 at the 90th and quartiles at $82,070 and $109,780. That is 0.6% below the national median of $100,330. The row is SOC 29-1122, an exact match to the occupation.

Springfield publishes $102,810 against Chicago-Naperville-Elgin's $99,860. The most consistent explanation is supply: Chicago hosts several occupational therapy programmes and a deep clinician pool, while Springfield and other downstate markets have to recruit into thinner labour markets. Add that Chicago's occupational therapy employment includes a large school-district and early-intervention component paid on public schedules, and the absence of a Chicago premium stops being surprising.

The Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which is Illinois's general professional licensing agency. It requires a degree from an accredited programme, supervised fieldwork and the national certification examination, licenses occupational therapy assistants separately, and mandates continuing education for renewal. Not every Illinois profession sits with IDFPR — plumbing is licensed by the Department of Public Health and radiologic technology by the state's radiation protection programme — so it is worth confirming the agency for any given credential.

It is a solid but unremarkable market on the published data: a median 0.6% below national, a peer group of Rhode Island, Ohio, Florida, Kansas and New Mexico all within a percent, and a 1.21 location quotient indicating plenty of positions. The genuine advantages are the flat 4.95% income tax with no municipal layer, and downstate cost of living. The disadvantage is that the state's above-average employment concentration has not translated into an above-average wage.

By setting and specialism rather than by metro — the whole metro table spans about fourteen percent while the band from $82,070 at the 25th percentile to $109,780 at the 75th is wider. Hand therapy, neurological rehabilitation and acute or outpatient rehabilitation generally pay above school and early intervention work, which is priced administratively. The $132,180 ninetieth percentile is management or independent practice.

Because location quotient measures how many positions exist, not how they are funded. Illinois employs occupational therapists at 21% above the national rate for its size, and a substantial share of that employment sits in publicly funded settings — school district special education services, early intervention programmes, and skilled nursing facilities operating on Medicaid and Medicare rates. Compensation in those settings is set by budget and reimbursement rather than by competition for clinicians. The result is exactly what the data shows: 7,710 positions, and a median 0.6% below the national figure.

That geography is close to irrelevant within Illinois and setting is everything. Springfield $102,810, Chicago-Naperville-Elgin $99,860, Peoria $96,920, Rockford $96,620 and Bloomington $90,060 span about fourteen percent, and Chicago is not at the top. Meanwhile the interquartile range from $82,070 to $109,780 is wider than that, and it is traversed by moving between settings — from school and early intervention work toward hand therapy, acute rehabilitation and outpatient specialisation. A therapist who plans their Illinois career geographically will find they have optimised the wrong variable.

Mixed, and it depends on where in the state. The flat 4.95% income tax with no municipal layer anywhere is genuinely simple and compares well with Michigan's city taxes or New York's. Downstate Illinois — Springfield at $102,810, Peoria at $96,920 — combines close-to-national wages with low housing costs, which is a strong position. Chicago combines an essentially national wage with high property tax and among the highest combined sales tax rates of any large American city, which is a weaker one. The data supports downstate Illinois more strongly than most people would expect.