Chicago Compensation Benchmarks 2026
Chicago does not pay one premium. Across 165 major occupations it runs +5.1% against national medians on average, but that average hides a spread of 53.7 points between the best-paid and worst-paid occupation groups in this metro.
Which means the shortcut most pay structures rely on, a single Chicago geographic adjustment factor, is wrong in both directions at once: it underpays the roles this market values and overpays relative to market on the roles it does not.
Computed from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN (CBSA 16980). 664 occupations carry metro-level data; 165 have Chicago employment above 5,000 and are used here. Free to read, free to use, no account required.
Chicago pay by occupation group
Median wage vs national · employment-weighted within group
→ Construction & Extraction at +45.3% and Life, Physical & Social Science at -8.4%. Same metro, same month, 53.7 points apart.
Where Chicago pays more
Largest premium vs national median
Where Chicago pays less
Largest discount vs national median
The ten roles Chicago employs most
Metro median vs national median · annualised at 2,080 hours
| Role | Chicago | National | Gap | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Laborers and Freight, Stock, and Material Movers, Hand | $40,560 | $40,248 | +0.8% | 158K |
| General and Operations Managers | $109,387 | $105,768 | +3.4% | 123K |
| Home Health and Personal Care Aides | $38,189 | $35,797 | +6.7% | 109K |
| Registered Nurses | $100,485 | $97,552 | +3.0% | 100K |
| Cashiers | $35,006 | $32,885 | +6.5% | 99K |
| Retail Salespersons | $35,818 | $35,422 | +1.1% | 97K |
| Stockers and Order Fillers | $38,438 | $37,336 | +3.0% | 80K |
| Customer Service Representatives | $47,112 | $44,782 | +5.2% | 75K |
| Janitors and Cleaners, Except Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners | $38,459 | $36,837 | +4.4% | 70K |
| Office Clerks, General | $46,342 | $45,011 | +3.0% | 67K |
What named Chicago employers file for the same job
US Department of Labor H-1B filings · FY2026 Q3 (decisions 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Jun 2026) · 14,555 certified Chicago filings from 3,962 employers
Market data tells you the range; it never tells you who pays what. Employer wage filings do. Taking one role, Software Developers, and only employers with 12+ Chicago filings in it, the same job in the same metro is filed anywhere from the 11th to above the 90th percentile of the market range on this page:
| Employer | Filings | Median filed | vs Chicago market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salesforce, Inc. | 12 | $207,600 | >P90 |
| Polar Operations LLC | 19 | $200,000 | P89 |
| Team Belvedere, LLC | 15 | $180,000 | P80 |
| McDonald's Corporation | 23 | $171,510 | P77 |
| Amazon Web Services, Inc. | 34 | $163,100 | P72 |
| Akuna Capital, LLC | 15 | $160,000 | P69 |
| MACHINE INTELLIGENCE LLC | 13 | $85,467 | P11 |
| AUGMENTED REALITY TECHNOLOGIES LLC | 17 | $85,467 | P11 |
| CLOUD SOCIAL TECHNOLOGIES LLC | 13 | $85,467 | P11 |
→ 80 percentile points between named employers, inside one role, inside one metro. A candidate moving between two of these companies is not moving within a band; they are changing markets.
Median filed by role · where it sits on the Chicago OEWS curve
What this data is, and is not. These are base salaries stated on Labor Condition Applications for visa-sponsored roles, floored by prevailing-wage rules: offered pay on a legal form, not a payroll extract, and base only, no bonus or equity. It shows how an employer positions pay for a role. Source: US Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification disclosure files, FY2026 Q3 (decisions 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Jun 2026). Employers keyed on federal tax ID; role medians computed only where an employer has 12 or more Chicago filings in that occupation. Metro membership is by worksite county in the OMB delineation BLS uses for this metro.
Method, and one exclusion worth naming
Each Chicago occupation is compared to its own national median from the same BLS survey vintage, so the comparison holds the job constant. Group figures are employment-weighted, meaning a group is driven by the roles Chicago actually employs rather than by an unweighted average across job titles.
Tipped occupations are excluded. BLS reports cash wages for tipped roles, and most of the variation between metros comes from state tip-credit law rather than local pay levels. Illinois and Indiana sit at opposite ends of tip-credit law, and Chicago has its own ordinance, so tipped roles in this metro would blend three legal regimes into one misleading number. Waiters, bartenders and similar roles are left out for that reason.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN (CBSA 16980). Employer-reported wages from approximately 1.1 million surveyed establishments. Analysis by CompSignal; the underlying figures are BLS, the comparison and commentary are ours.
Run this on your own roles
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