RN Salary in Illinois: How the Numbers Stack Up in 2026

The median RN salary in Illinois is $95,990 a year, which works out to $46.15 an hour. The mean (average) is close behind at $94,360, which tells you the distribution is not badly skewed by a handful of outliers at the top. Half of Illinois RNs earn more than $95,990, half earn less.

The more useful number for planning your own career is the spread: the 10th percentile sits at $69,170, and the 90th percentile sits at $118,190. That is a $49,020 gap between the bottom and top deciles of the same job title, and it is not random. The $69,170 floor is where you typically find brand-new graduates still on orientation, RNs in long-term care and skilled nursing facilities, and nurses working in rural counties where hospital systems have smaller budgets and less competition for staff. The $118,190 ceiling belongs to a different profile: RNs with a decade or more in specialty acute care (ICU, ED, OR), nurses who load up on night, weekend, and charge differentials, and staff at big unionized systems in and around Chicago, where bargained wage scales and cost of living both push numbers up.

If you are choosing where to train, our ranked list of best RN programs in Illinois is a reasonable place to start, since program reputation and clinical placement quality both affect how competitive you are for the higher-paying jobs later.

The practical takeaway: a new grad RN in Illinois should expect pay closer to the 10th-to-25th percentile range in year one, not the median. The median is an experienced-nurse number. Getting from the bottom of that range to the top is a matter of years, setting, and credentials, which the rest of this page walks through.

The national median RN salary is $97,550, or $46.90 an hour. Illinois sits at $95,990, which is $1,560 below the national number and good for rank #21 of 51 states. That's not a bad number, but it's not a reason to move to Illinois for pay alone if you're coming from a higher-paying state. For the full picture of how every state stacks up, see our national RN salary guide.

Where Illinois actually wins is against the states that touch it. Compare the medians directly:

• Iowa: $78,630, which is $17,360 less than Illinois
• Kentucky: $81,040, which is $14,950 less than Illinois
• Missouri: $81,780, which is $14,210 less than Illinois
• Indiana: $83,500, which is $12,490 less than Illinois
• Wisconsin: $95,530, which is only $460 less than Illinois

That's a real, honest split. If you're an RN in eastern Iowa, southern Wisconsin, northern Kentucky, eastern Missouri, or western Indiana and you're within commuting range of an Illinois hospital, the math favors crossing the border, and it's not close for four of those five states. A $12,000 to $17,000 gap isn't something cost of living quietly erases. Illinois does tax wage income like most states, so plan for that, but the gap is large enough that it typically survives the math even after taxes and a longer commute.

Wisconsin is the exception. At $460 apart, an Illinois-versus-Wisconsin decision should be made on everything except pay: commute, schedule, benefits, unit culture, and cost of living near where you would actually live. Chasing an extra $460 a year across a state line is not worth it on its own.

The RN salary ladder in Illinois runs from $80,020 at the 25th percentile to $105,960 at the 75th percentile, with the median at $95,990 sitting almost exactly in the middle. That $25,940 span between the 25th and 75th percentiles is where most working RNs in Illinois actually live, and it is worth understanding what moves a nurse from one rung to the next.

Years on the unit matter, but they are not the whole story. A nurse who stays in the same med-surg role for a decade will see real but modest movement up the ladder. What actually accelerates it:

• Night, weekend, and charge nurse differentials, which are added on top of base pay and can meaningfully change annual earnings for RNs willing to work those shifts
• Specialty certifications like CCRN (critical care), CEN (emergency), or OCN (oncology), which many acute-care systems tie directly to a pay step or a hiring preference for higher-paying units
• Employment at a unionized hospital system, where wage scales are bargained and posted, and RNs know exactly what a step increase is worth instead of negotiating blind
• Moving into a higher-acuity setting: ICU, ED, OR, and specialty procedural units tend to sit above general med-surg on the same pay scale
• Finishing a BSN if you started with an associate degree, since most large Illinois hospital systems use degree level as a gate for their internal pay ladders and for charge or leadership roles

If you came up through an ADN program, closing that last gap is usually the highest-leverage move available without changing careers. Our guide to RN-to-BSN programs covers how working nurses finish the degree without stepping away from a paycheck.

If your goal is a bigger number, not just a slightly better one, there is an honest order of operations here. Some of these moves are big and slow. Some are smaller and fast.

The single biggest jump is becoming a nurse practitioner. The median NP salary in Illinois is $130,680, which is $34,690 a year above the Illinois RN median. That is not a raise, it is a different pay tier entirely, and it dwarfs every other move on this list. If that gap gets your attention, our nurse practitioner salary breakdown shows how that number holds up by setting and specialty, and our list of nurse practitioner programs in Illinois covers what it actually takes to get there from an RN license.

But the NP route is not for everyone, and it is worth saying who should skip it. If you are within a few years of retirement, if you like bedside patient care and do not want to trade it for a prescriber role, or if you are already sitting near the 75th or 90th percentile through shift differentials and specialty certification, the tuition, lost income during clinicals, and years of additional school may not pencil out. An RN already earning close to $105,960 to $118,190 has less ground to make up than the $34,690 NP gap suggests.

Below the NP jump, in order of typical payoff:

• Finish your BSN if you have not, through an RN-to-BSN program. It unlocks internal pay ladders and leadership eligibility at most large Illinois systems.
• Switch setting or specialty toward ICU, ED, OR, or another high-acuity unit, which tend to sit toward the top of the same pay scale as general floor nursing.
• Pick up a recognized certification (CCRN, CEN, and similar) that your employer already ties to a pay differential or a hiring preference.
• Consider a travel nursing contract. Travel pay is structured very differently from staff RN salary, with stipends and contract length doing a lot of the work, so treat it as its own decision rather than assuming it simply beats the Illinois median.

A solid RN salary means little without jobs to back it up. Illinois employs 138,910 registered nurses, the seventh-largest RN workforce of any state, out of 3,379,720 RNs nationally. That is a large, deep market: multiple major hospital systems, academic medical centers, community hospitals, and long-term care facilities across a state that runs from dense urban Chicago to small rural counties downstate. A big employed base like that usually means more job openings, more lateral movement between employers without relocating, and more leverage to negotiate shift, unit, or differential pay, since Illinois systems are competing with each other, not just with a single dominant employer.

There is also a clear on-ramp for LPNs. The median LPN salary in Illinois is $75,000, and RNs earn $20,990 more than that. For an LPN weighing whether an LPN-to-RN bridge program is worth the time and cost, that $20,990 annual gap is the number to run against tuition and lost wages during the program, and for most LPNs it clears that bar within a few years.

Nationally, RN employment is projected to grow 6% through 2032, and a state with Illinois's employment base tends to absorb that growth across a wide range of settings rather than concentrating it in one city or system.

If you are deciding where to start or where to finish your RN education in Illinois, our ranked best RN programs in Illinois list is the next practical step, whether you are a new student choosing a program or a working LPN mapping out the bridge to RN licensure.