Optometrist Salary in Illinois 2026:
$145,620 Median

Illinois optometrists earn a median $145,620 a year, $70.01 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $129,310 and $162,650 and a full range of $93,350 to $190,620. That is 6.6% above the $136,570 national median, and the compressed middle reflects an occupation where nearly everyone holds the same doctoral credential.

Peoria at $166,600, well ahead of Chicago-Naperville-Elgin at $145,630 and Bloomington at $132,740. A twenty-one-thousand-dollar downstate premium over Chicago tells you where the recruiting difficulty is: Illinois's optometrist supply concentrates around the Chicago market, and downstate practices pay to pull people out of it.

Through the Board of Optometry at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. You need a Doctor of Optometry degree from an accredited school, the National Board of Examiners in Optometry examination sequence, and the Illinois jurisprudence requirement. Illinois licences renew on a set cycle with continuing education, including hours specific to therapeutic and ocular disease practice.

Yes. Illinois grants optometrists therapeutic prescribing authority, so an appropriately certified Illinois optometrist can diagnose and treat a defined range of ocular conditions with topical and oral medications rather than referring every case to ophthalmology. The scope is set by the Illinois Optometric Practice Act and administered by IDFPR, and using it fully is what distinguishes a medically oriented practice from a refraction-driven one.

It is the main route above the state 75th percentile of $162,650. Salaried associate optometry in Illinois plateaus, while ownership converts practice profit into personal income and reaches the $190,620 ninetieth percentile. Illinois's flat 4.95% tax and its pass-through entity tax election make the arithmetic on a practice buy-in relatively simple compared with graduated-rate states.

That is exactly why. A location quotient of 0.92 means Illinois supports slightly less optometry employment per worker than the US average, while carrying a large and ageing population with substantial diabetic eye care demand. Thin supply against solid demand raises price, and the effect is strongest away from Chicago — which is precisely where the Peoria figure of $166,600 comes from.

It mixes employment models that behave very differently. A salaried associate in a retail optical setting, an associate in a private practice with a production bonus, and a practice owner drawing profit all appear in this wage row, and OEWS captures owner income inconsistently at best. The $190,620 ninetieth percentile is better read as the top of the employed distribution than as what a successful Illinois practice owner actually earns.

It sets the floor and the ceiling separately. Illinois's retail optical chains, concentrated in the Chicago market, hire steadily and pay predictably around and below the state median of $145,620, often with production incentives. Private and medically oriented practices, and the ophthalmology groups that employ optometrists for medical eye care, pay higher but hire less often. The downstate premium visible in Peoria's $166,600 exists mostly on the private side.