Physician Assistant Salary in Illinois: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

A physician assistant in Illinois earns a median of $131,950 a year, or about $63.44 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most PAs in the state land between $105,160 at the 10th percentile and $162,330 at the 90th. That puts the typical Illinois PA a touch below the national median of $135,880, but take-home and cost of living change the picture once you run the numbers.

How Illinois compares to the national PA salary

Illinois pays physician assistants a median of $131,950, while the national median sits at $135,880. So the typical PA here earns about $3,930 less per year than the typical PA nationwide. It’s a real gap, but a small one, and it shrinks fast once you look at what stays in your pocket after tax.

The state mean of $131,880 lands almost exactly on the median, which tells you Illinois pay is tightly clustered rather than skewed by a handful of very high earners. The middle half of PAs in the state earn between $122,780 at the 25th percentile and $145,600 at the 75th. The floor and ceiling spread wider: $105,160 at the bottom decile, $162,330 at the top.

Roughly 3,790 physician assistants work in Illinois, according to the BLS. That’s a sizable base for a single state, concentrated heavily in the Chicago area. The depth of that market matters because it gives you bargaining power. When thousands of PA jobs exist across hospital systems, specialty clinics, and outpatient groups, you can shop offers rather than take the first one.

It helps to read the national gap in context. The $3,930 difference between the Illinois median ($131,950) and the national median ($135,880) is about 2.9% of pay. That’s smaller than the swing you’d see by changing specialty or moving between metros inside Illinois itself. In other words, the state line matters less than the choices you make within it. A Champaign-Urbana PA at $139,950 already earns $4,070 more than the national median, so “Illinois pays below average” is true on the headline and misleading on the ground.

The clustering is worth dwelling on too. When the mean ($131,880) and median ($131,950) sit within $70 of each other, it signals a profession with disciplined, structured pay rather than a winner-take-all market. For a PA weighing this career, that predictability is a feature. You can forecast your earnings curve with real confidence, because the percentiles below describe a tight, well-defined ladder rather than a lottery.

Physician assistant pay by experience in Illinois

BLS percentiles are the cleanest proxy for experience, because pay for this role rises steadily with years on the job, specialty, and how much autonomy you carry. A new graduate PA typically starts near the 10th percentile and climbs toward the median within a few years. The senior tier is where specialty certification, supervisory duties, and high-acuity settings pay off.

The jump from entry to senior is $57,170 a year. That’s the single most useful number for planning a career here: a PA who builds toward the top decile roughly grows their pay by more than half over a starting salary. Most of that climb happens in the first decade, then flattens unless you move into a higher-paying specialty or take on leadership.

The early-career bump is the steepest part of the curve. Going from the 10th percentile to the 25th adds $17,620, and reaching the median adds another $9,170 on top of that. Surgical specialties, emergency medicine, and dermatology tend to push PAs toward the upper percentiles faster than primary care or general internal medicine. If you’re choosing a first job purely on dollars, the setting and specialty matter more than the employer’s name.

Look at the back half of the ladder and the story shifts. From the median of $131,950 to the 75th percentile of $145,600 is a $13,650 step, and from there to the 90th of $162,330 is another $16,730. Those gains don’t arrive automatically with tenure. A PA who stays in the same setting doing the same work tends to plateau somewhere around the median after the first decade. The PAs who reach the experienced and senior bands almost always changed something deliberately: they specialized, took procedures into their own scope, moved to a higher-paying system, or added supervisory load.

It’s also worth translating the percentiles into hourly terms, because many PA roles are negotiated and staffed by the hour. The entry tier of $105,160 works out to roughly $50.56 an hour, the median to $63.44, and the senior tier of $162,330 to about $78.04. That $27.48 hourly spread from entry to senior is the number to keep in mind when you’re comparing a salaried offer against per-diem or locum rates, since locum work is almost always quoted hourly.

One caution on reading these figures: BLS percentiles describe the whole Illinois PA population at a single point in time, not one person’s career path. A new graduate won’t necessarily start at exactly the 10th percentile, and plenty of mid-career generalists never climb past the median. Treat the table as the shape of the market, then map your own specialty and setting onto it.

Physician assistant salary by Illinois metro

Where you work inside Illinois changes the median by thousands of dollars, and the highest-paying metro isn’t Chicago. The downstate university and capital markets pay more on the headline number, partly because they compete for a thinner pool of PAs. Here’s how the five largest reporting metros stack up, according to BLS (2025).

Champaign-Urbana tops the list at $139,950, which is $12,010 above the Chicago metro median of $127,940. Springfield and Peoria both clear $133,000. Chicago and Rockford sit at the bottom of this group, separated by just $140. That looks backward until you remember two things. First, the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro employs 3,050 of the state’s roughly 3,790 PAs, so it sets the volume but not the ceiling. Second, downstate medical centers and university-affiliated systems often pay a premium to attract clinicians who might otherwise head to a big city.

The practical takeaway is that the Chicago median undersells what an experienced PA can earn there, because that metro spans everything from rural Indiana counties to downtown academic hospitals. The $127,940 figure is the midpoint of an enormous, varied market. A specialty PA at a Chicago teaching hospital can sit well above it. Meanwhile, the downstate metros offer strong nominal pay against far cheaper housing, which is the combination that actually builds wealth.

Run the spread across these five metros and the top-to-bottom difference is $12,150, from Champaign-Urbana’s $139,950 down to Rockford’s $127,800. That’s a meaningful raise hiding inside a single state. For a PA who is geographically flexible, especially early in a career, choosing Champaign-Urbana or Springfield over Chicago can mean more gross pay and a dramatically lower cost of living at the same time. The two downstate university and capital markets, Champaign-Urbana and Springfield, both clear $133,000 while sitting in housing markets a fraction of Cook County’s.

The employment counts tell their own story about bargaining power. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin reports 3,050 PA jobs, while Champaign-Urbana has 120, Peoria 110, Rockford 60, and Springfield just 50. The downstate markets are thin, which cuts both ways. There’s a premium because employers compete for scarce clinicians, but there are also fewer total openings, so a job search there takes patience. Chicago offers volume and variety; downstate offers a higher median against cheaper living. Neither is strictly better, and the right answer depends on the life you want outside work.

One more practical note: the Chicago metro officially spans IL-IN, so a slice of those 3,050 jobs sit across the Indiana line. If you’re commuting from or living on the Indiana side, your state tax situation changes, and that’s worth modeling separately from the Illinois figures in the take-home section below.

Take-home pay after taxes in Illinois

Gross salary is the headline. Net pay is what funds your life. Illinois levies a flat 4.95% income tax, so your state bill scales cleanly with income and there’s no progressive bracket creep to model. The table below runs the four key percentile points through federal tax, FICA (Social Security and Medicare), and Illinois state tax, all from our 2026 tax-year model.

At the median, an Illinois PA keeps $94,409 of a $131,950 salary, an effective all-in rate of 28.5%. That works out to $7,867 a month. The entry-level PA nets $77,161 at a 26.6% effective rate, and the senior PA nets $113,670 at 30.0%. The effective rate climbs slowly across the range because federal tax is progressive while Illinois state tax is flat.

It’s worth seeing how each piece of the bill moves. At the median, federal tax takes $20,915, FICA takes $10,094, and Illinois takes $6,532. Federal is by far the largest line and the one that grows fastest as you climb the percentiles: it jumps from $14,749 at entry to $28,206 at the senior tier, nearly doubling. FICA grows more gently, from $8,045 to $12,418, because the Social Security portion caps out at the annual wage base while Medicare keeps applying. The Illinois line is the most predictable of the three. At a flat 4.95%, it rises in a straight line from $5,205 at entry to $8,035 at the senior level, with no surprises.

The gap between gross and net widens as you earn more, which is the practical cost of climbing the ladder. An entry PA loses $27,999 of a $105,160 salary to taxes. A senior PA loses $48,659 of a $162,330 salary. So while the senior PA earns $57,170 more in gross pay than the entry PA, only $36,509 of that reaches the bank account after the tax wedge. That’s still a large raise, but it’s the after-tax figure, not the headline, that you should anchor your budgeting and savings goals to.

Here’s the cross-state comparison that overviews skip. Take the Illinois median PA earning $131,950 and net of $94,409. The same gross in Texas, which has no state income tax, nets $100,941. That’s a gap of $6,532 a year, exactly the Illinois state tax bill at this income. Put plainly, a Texas PA on identical pay keeps $6,532 more every year, or about $544 a month, purely because Illinois taxes income and Texas doesn’t.

But the sticker tax gap isn’t the whole story, and this is where most salary pages stop too early. Net pay minus your local housing cost is the number that actually matters. A Texas PA who keeps $6,532 more but pays it all back in higher rent or a pricier mortgage hasn’t gained anything. Downstate Illinois metros like Peoria and Springfield pair $133,000-plus medians with some of the cheapest housing in the Midwest, which can close or reverse that gap. Run your own city’s rent against the net figure above before you treat a no-tax state as an automatic raise. A clean way to model the full picture at filing time is TurboTax, which handles multi-state and 1099 income if you pick up locum shifts. You can also pressure-test any offer with the Illinois paycheck calculator.

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How to earn more as a PA in Illinois

The percentile spread shows the room. Moving from the median to the 90th percentile is worth $30,380 a year in gross pay. Here’s where that money actually comes from in this state.

• Pick a higher-paying specialty. Surgical PAs, emergency medicine, dermatology, and interventional cardiology consistently sit in the upper percentiles. The decision you make about specialty in your first three years drives more lifetime pay than almost anything else.
• Target downstate and university medical centers. Champaign-Urbana pays a $12,010 higher median than the Chicago metro. If you’re open on location, the academic and capital-city systems pay a premium and cost far less to live near.
• Add a high-demand certification. A Certificate of Added Qualifications (CAQ) in your specialty signals depth and supports a higher band. Short, focused coursework through platforms like Coursera can fill gaps in areas like clinical research, health informatics, or leadership that translate to pay.
• Pick up locum or per-diem shifts. Hourly locum rates often beat your salaried equivalent of $63.44. A handful of weekend shifts a month is a direct, fast lever on annual income.
• Move into a lead or supervisory PA role. Large Chicago systems staff lead-PA and clinical-coordinator positions that carry both a base bump and a path toward the senior tier.
• Negotiate the full package, not just base. CME budgets, sign-on bonuses, productivity (RVU) incentives, and shift differentials add up. In a market with 3,790 PAs and steady demand, you have standing to ask.

Job outlook for physician assistants in Illinois

The PA role is one of the fastest-growing clinical careers in the country, driven by an aging population and physician shortages that push more care toward advanced-practice providers. Illinois mirrors that nationally. With about 3,790 PAs already working in the state and the Chicago metro alone employing 3,050 of them, the hiring base is deep and stable across hospital systems, specialty practices, and outpatient groups.

Demand downstate is structurally tight, which is exactly why metros like Champaign-Urbana, Springfield, and Peoria pay above the Chicago median. Fewer clinicians compete for those roles, so employers pay up. If you want to see live openings and current pay bands across the state, ZipRecruiter tracks PA listings by metro and specialty.

Related and higher-paying roles in Illinois

If you’re weighing the PA path against adjacent clinical roles in Illinois, here’s how the pay compares using BLS (2025) state medians. A physician assistant ($131,950) actually out-earns a nurse practitioner ($130,680) here by $1,270, an unusually close call since NPs often lead PAs in other states. Against a registered nurse ($95,990), the PA median runs $35,960 higher, which is the real financial argument for the extra training a PA role requires.

Illinois physician assistant salary FAQ

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS 2025 (occupation 29-1071). Take-home figures modeled for tax year 2026 using federal brackets, FICA, and Illinois’ flat 4.95% state income tax. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.