Pediatrician Salary in Illinois 2026:
$196,760 Median

Illinois paediatricians earn a median $196,760 a year, $94.60 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $134,420 and $310,240 and a full range of $106,520 to $376,850. That is 6.3% below the $210,040 national median, one of the wider negative gaps for a physician specialty in this state.

Springfield at $217,000, well ahead of Chicago-Naperville-Elgin at $188,340 and Rockford at $161,330. Springfield being the only published Illinois metro above the statewide median is the whole story: downstate health systems must bid to fill paediatric posts, and the Chicago market does not have to.

No. Illinois licenses paediatricians as physicians through the Medical Licensing Board at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, with no paediatrics-specific credential. Board certification from the American Board of Pediatrics is what employers require, and subspecialty certification in areas such as neonatology or paediatric critical care is issued through the same national body rather than by Illinois.

Because Chicago has the supply. The city's children's hospitals and academic centres train large paediatric residency cohorts and retain many of them, and paediatricians are willing to accept less to stay in a market with that concentration of paediatric medicine. Downstate systems, competing for a much thinner pool, have to pay more — which is why Springfield reaches $217,000 while Chicago-Naperville-Elgin sits at $188,340.

It is at the middle of this range rather than the top. The Illinois 25th percentile of $134,420 is a realistic employed general paediatrics figure, and Illinois's flat 4.95% tax with no city wage tax at least keeps take-home predictable. Reaching the $310,240 seventy-fifth percentile in this state generally means subspecialising, taking on intensive care or hospitalist call, or accepting a downstate post with a recruitment premium attached.

Because the shortage is geographic and the employment is not. Illinois employs about 1,180 paediatricians at a location quotient of 0.76 — below national density — but the great majority of them are in the Chicago region, where competition among paediatricians for desirable posts holds pay down. The parts of Illinois that are genuinely short of paediatricians employ few of them, so their higher rates barely move the state median.

It is a small-sample estimate covering a heterogeneous specialty. About 1,180 paediatricians statewide and only three published metros means the numbers move more between vintages than a large-occupation figure does. It also mixes general paediatrics with subspecialty practice — the $134,420 twenty-fifth percentile and the $310,240 seventy-fifth describe genuinely different careers filed under one code.

They are the main mechanics above the median. Illinois health systems typically pay employed paediatricians a base plus productivity, so panel size and visit volume set the core of it, while inpatient, newborn nursery and night call add stipends. Subspecialty practice — neonatology, paediatric intensive care, paediatric cardiology — changes the model entirely and is what carries a paediatrician from the Illinois median of $196,760 toward the $310,240 seventy-fifth percentile.