Pediatrician Salary in Chicago, IL 2026,
$188,340 Median | BLS + Market Data

Chicago paediatricians earn a BLS median of $188,340/yr across the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro, with a published band from $106,520 to $379,260. That is 10.3% below the US median for general paediatricians. BLS counts 860 paediatricians in the metro.

No — the metro median sits 4.3% below the Illinois statewide figure. Downstate and smaller-market Illinois employers frequently pay above metropolitan rates to recruit paediatricians into communities with fewer of them, while the Chicago region concentrates academic and safety-net paediatric employment. Among peer metros Chicago sits below San Francisco at $207,450 but above Miami at $186,620, Los Angeles at $176,900, Austin at $175,680 and Denver at $173,950.

Yes, and they occupy most of the space between the median and the $379,260 at the top of this band. Subspecialty paediatrics requires a three-year fellowship on top of residency, and the tertiary children's services in this metro that employ subspecialists compete nationally for them. The economics are awkward though, and paediatricians discuss it openly: several paediatric subspecialties pay less than adult equivalents despite equal or longer training, because paediatric volumes are lower and paediatric payer mix is weighted toward Medicaid. The premium over general paediatrics is real; the premium over adult medicine often is not.

Through the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, which issues a general Physician and Surgeon licence via its Medical Board — there is no paediatrics-specific licence. The clinical route is a medical degree, the national licensing examination sequence, and a three-year accredited paediatrics residency, with board certification through the American Board of Pediatrics expected by essentially every employer here. Subspecialty practice requires a further three-year fellowship. Licences are statewide, and Chicago issues nothing municipal on top.

Payer mix, principally. A large share of children in Cook County are covered by Medicaid, whose paediatric reimbursement rates sit below commercial insurance, and the employers serving those children — safety-net hospitals, federally qualified health centres, academic outpatient clinics — pay from what they collect. Add the metro's heavy concentration of academic paediatric appointments, which trade compensation for teaching and research, and a below-national median follows. It is a statement about how paediatric care is funded here, not about how much of it is needed.

Paediatrics sits at the intersection of two unfavourable facts. Children are cheaper to treat than adults, so a paediatric practice generates less revenue per patient than an adult one with the same panel size. And children are disproportionately covered by public insurance, which pays less than commercial cover. Neither is a Chicago phenomenon, but this metro carries both more heavily than average, which is why the published median here sits below the national one. Paediatricians choosing this market should understand that they are choosing the funding structure as much as the city.

The 10th percentile at $106,520 and the 25th at $107,110 are almost the same figure, which means a substantial cluster of paediatric posts in this metro pay at very similar, relatively low levels. That cluster is academic and safety-net paediatrics: instructor and junior faculty appointments, community health centre posts, and part-time clinic sessions. These are real jobs with real value, and many paediatricians take them deliberately for the population they serve and the training environment. But their density here is the single clearest reason this metro's distribution starts where it does.

National projected growth of 0.8% for this speciality reflects falling birth rates, and it makes paediatrics look like a stagnant field. On the ground in this region the picture is different: paediatric access on the South and West Sides is a documented problem, practices have closed in exactly the neighbourhoods with the most children on public insurance, and emergency departments absorb the consequences. The roughly 30 openings a year pro-rated to this metro measures salaried turnover in an occupation whose real constraint is that the places needing paediatricians most cannot fund the posts. Prospective paediatricians should read the projection as a statement about funding, not about need.