Radiologic Technologist Salary in Illinois 2026,
$79,930 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Illinois figure is $79,930 a year, or $38.43 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $59,350 at the 10th percentile to $104,210 at the 90th and quartiles at $66,000 and $97,950. That is level with the national median of $80,110. The row is SOC 29-2034, an exact match to the occupation.

The state's radiation protection programme, not the general professional licensing agency. That placement reflects what the credential is for — controlling who may operate radiation-producing equipment — and it catches out technologists relocating to Illinois who search the wrong registers. The requirements are graduation from an accredited programme and national certification through the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists, with continuing education for renewal.

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin at $82,140, then Springfield $77,800, Peoria $76,490, Kankakee $75,620 and Rockford $75,500. The spread is about nine percent. Since Illinois levies a flat 4.95% income tax with no municipal layer, the comparison is purely gross pay against cost of living — and downstate Illinois wins that comfortably.

By adding modalities. The distance from the $66,000 twenty-fifth percentile to the $97,950 seventy-fifth is largely the distance from plain radiography to computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, mammography and interventional work, each of which carries its own accreditation and additional training. That is a far larger lever than tenure or geography, and it is the standard career structure in this profession.

Unremarkable, which is a legitimate answer. The median is level with national, the peer group of Virginia, Idaho, Maine, New Mexico and Wisconsin sits within a percent, and the location quotient of 0.85 says Illinois employs the occupation slightly below the national rate for its size. The flat income tax with no municipal layer is a mild advantage and high property tax a mild disadvantage. The decision should turn on modality plans and personal circumstances rather than on the state.

Because a credential you cannot find is a credential you cannot obtain on schedule. Illinois places radiologic technology accreditation with its radiation protection programme rather than with the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation that licenses most healthcare professions here — occupational therapists, pharmacy technicians, dentists and physicians among them. The logic is coherent: the credential regulates the operation of radiation-producing equipment, and the same agency regulates the equipment itself. But it means a technologist relocating to Illinois has to know where to look, and the timeline for accreditation is what gates a start date. It is a small administrative fact with a large practical consequence.

That this profession has a built-in ladder that most support occupations lack, and it is worth planning around. The distance from $66,000 at the 25th percentile to $97,950 at the 75th is one of the wider interquartile ranges in this Illinois unit, and it corresponds to accreditation rather than to seniority. A technologist who adds computed tomography and then magnetic resonance imaging over several years moves through the band in a way that a dental assistant or a sterile processing technician simply cannot, because those occupations have no equivalent credential structure. The corollary is that a technologist who stays in plain radiography is choosing to stay in the lower half.

Real but different from the usual framing. Machine learning in radiology targets interpretation — the radiologist's work — rather than acquisition, which is the technologist's. Positioning a patient, selecting exposure factors, managing contrast and obtaining a diagnostic image remain physical and judgement-dependent tasks. What is changing is volume and throughput: as imaging becomes cheaper to interpret, more of it is ordered, which supports technologist demand. The advanced modalities are the most protected because they are the most technically demanding to acquire, which reinforces the same career advice the band already suggests.