Surgical Technologist Salary in Illinois: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

A surgical technologist in Illinois earns a median of $64,650 a year, or about $31.08 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most of the field falls between $48,560 at the 10th percentile and $91,890 at the 90th. That median lands right on the national figure, so Illinois pays the typical surgical tech almost exactly the U.S. average.

How Illinois compares to the national average

Here’s the unusual part. The median surgical technologist pay in Illinois is $64,650, and the national median is also $64,650. There is no gap. A surgical tech in Illinois earns the same typical wage as the field does across the entire country, which is rare for any single state. Most states sit a few thousand dollars above or below the national line. Illinois sits exactly on it.

The mean, or average, wage runs higher at $70,070. When the mean climbs above the median like this, it tells you a slice of the field, usually senior and big-city techs, pulls the average up. The median is the better number to plan around because it’s the true middle: half of Illinois surgical techs earn more than $64,650 and half earn less.

The spread is wide. Bottom-decile earners (the 10th percentile) make $48,560, while top-decile earners (the 90th percentile) make $91,890. That’s a difference of more than $43,000 between a new tech and a seasoned one in the same state. Where you fall in that range depends on experience, your metro, your facility, and whether you pick up call, trauma, or specialty cases. BLS counts roughly 3,570 surgical technologists employed in Illinois, so this is a sizable, stable field with real room to move up.

One way to read the national tie: cost of living in Illinois is moderate for the Midwest, and pay tracks it. You’re not getting a coastal premium, but you’re also not paying coastal rents outside of central Chicago. The dollar figure and what it buys stay reasonably close, which is more than you can say for the highest-paying states.

It also helps to see the full percentile ladder in one place, because the median alone hides how much the field stretches. The 25th percentile sits at $60,160 and the 75th at $77,670, so the middle half of Illinois surgical techs, the people who aren’t brand new and aren’t yet senior leads, earn somewhere in that $17,510 band. That’s the realistic planning range for most working techs. The tails matter too: $48,560 at the bottom and $91,890 at the top frame what’s possible on either end of a career. If you’re benchmarking an offer, compare it against the percentile it lands on, not just the median. An offer of $60,000 isn’t low, it’s roughly the 25th percentile, which is normal for a tech in the first couple of years. An offer of $78,000 means you’re being paid like the experienced 75th percentile, and you should expect the case load and specialty work to match.

Surgical technologist pay by experience in Illinois

Experience is the single biggest lever on surgical tech pay in Illinois. A first-year tech and a 15-year tech doing the same role can be separated by tens of thousands of dollars. The table below maps the BLS percentile points to typical career stages.

The jump from entry to early career is steep. A new tech at $48,560 who reaches the 25th percentile at $60,160 picks up roughly $11,600 a year, often within the first two or three years once they’re cleared on a full case load and no longer need a second scrub watching them. That early climb usually comes from getting fast and reliable in a couple of service lines, not from changing jobs.

From the median at $64,650 to the experienced 75th percentile at $77,670 is another $13,020. This stretch is where specialization pays off. Techs who own cardiovascular, neuro, orthopedic, or robotic cases are harder to replace and command more. The top decile at $91,890 typically belongs to senior techs in high-acuity Chicago hospitals, surgical first assistants, or leads who run call and trauma coverage. Hitting that level is realistic, but it rarely happens by staying in a low-volume outpatient setting.

The hourly figures matter if you work overtime or take call. At the median, $31.08 an hour means time-and-a-half is $46.62, and senior techs at $44.18 an hour earn $66.27 for overtime. In trauma centers and busy ORs, those premium hours add up fast and are a big reason actual take-home often exceeds the base annual number.

Surgical technologist salary by Illinois metro

Where you scrub in Illinois changes your pay. The Chicago metro both pays the most among large metros and employs the overwhelming majority of the state’s surgical techs. Here are the five Illinois metros BLS reports, ranked by median pay.

Bloomington tops the list at $68,140, slightly ahead of the Chicago metro’s $66,360, though it’s a tiny market with only about 80 techs, so a handful of high earners can move that median. The number to anchor on is Chicago at $66,360, which sits above the statewide median of $64,650 and employs 2,530 techs, about 71% of every surgical tech job in Illinois. If you want volume of openings, case variety, and the highest realistic ceiling, the Chicago area is where it is.

The downstate metros tell a clear story. Springfield ($62,590), Rockford ($61,740), and Peoria ($59,470) all pay below the state median. The gap between Chicago and Peoria is $6,890 at the median. That’s real money, but Peoria rent and home prices are a fraction of north-side Chicago’s, so a downstate tech can keep more of each dollar even on a lower headline wage. The right move depends on whether you optimize for the biggest paycheck or the biggest gap between pay and cost of living.

One practical note: these are metro medians, not ceilings. A senior cardiovascular tech in Peoria can still reach the statewide 75th or 90th percentile if the facility runs high-acuity cases. Metro medians tell you where the middle of the market sits, not where you personally top out.

The employment numbers are worth reading alongside the pay. Chicago’s 2,530 techs dwarf every other market combined. Peoria (180), Rockford (160), Springfield (130), and Bloomington (80) together account for only about 550 jobs. For a job seeker, that concentration cuts two ways. In Chicago you’ll find the most openings at any given moment, plus the freedom to move between hospital systems without relocating, which is the single best way to bump pay. In the smaller metros, openings are rarer, but a single hospital often dominates local hiring, so building a strong reputation there carries real weight. If you’re early in your career and want options, the density of the Chicago market is a genuine advantage that doesn’t show up in the median figure alone.

It’s also worth naming what the downstate discount really is. The $6,890 median gap between Chicago and Peoria looks large on paper, but Chicago’s housing, parking, and commuting costs eat a meaningful chunk of that premium. A tech who scrubs in Springfield at $62,590 and owns a home for what a one-bedroom rents for on Chicago’s north side can be further ahead in monthly cash flow than the raw salary suggests. This is the same lesson the take-home section drives home: the headline wage is the start of the math, not the end of it.

Take-home pay after taxes in Illinois

Gross salary isn’t what hits your bank account. Illinois taxes income at a flat 4.95% rate for 2026, and on top of that you pay federal income tax and FICA (Social Security and Medicare). The table below shows estimated take-home at each career stage for a single filer, using the figures from our Illinois tax model.

At the median, a surgical tech grossing $64,650 keeps $50,667 after federal, FICA, and Illinois tax, which works out to $4,222 a month. The effective tax rate at that level is about 21.6%. As pay rises, the effective rate climbs with it: the senior tech at $91,890 nets $68,482, an effective rate of 25.5%, because federal brackets are progressive while Illinois stays flat.

Look at how the bite grows across the ladder. An entry tech at $48,560 pays $2,404 in Illinois tax and keeps $38,653, a 20.4% effective rate. The experienced tech at $77,670 pays $3,845 in state tax and nets $59,182 at a 23.8% effective rate. The Illinois portion stays a clean 4.95% of gross at every level because the state rate is flat, so the rising effective rate comes entirely from the federal side. That’s useful to know when you negotiate a raise: a $5,000 bump at the experienced level won’t all land in your pocket, because the marginal federal rate on those dollars is higher than your average rate. Roughly speaking, expect to keep around three-quarters of a raise once you’re past the median, not the full amount.

The monthly net figures are the ones to budget around. Entry techs see $3,221 a month, median techs $4,222, experienced techs $4,932, and senior techs $5,707. The climb from entry to senior is $2,486 in monthly take-home, which is what a full surgical tech career arc looks like in real spendable dollars after Illinois and the IRS take their share.

Now the comparison that actually matters. Texas charges no state income tax. A surgical tech earning the same $64,650 median in Texas would net $53,867, while the Illinois tech nets $50,667. That’s a gap of $3,200 a year, the exact amount Illinois takes in flat state income tax at this salary. Put plainly, the no-tax state leaves $3,200 more in your pocket on identical gross pay.

But that gap is only half the picture. Net pay minus local housing is the number that actually decides your standard of living. A surgical tech who nets $3,200 less in Illinois but pays meaningfully lower rent than they would in Austin or Dallas can still come out ahead month to month. Run your own figures before you read too much into the headline tax difference. The right tool is the Illinois paycheck calculator, and at filing time, software like TurboTax handles the flat Illinois return and federal withholding together.

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How to earn more as a surgical tech in Illinois

The pay range here is wide enough that moving up the percentiles is a concrete, reachable goal. Going from the median at $64,650 to the 75th percentile at $77,670 is worth $13,020 a year. Here’s how Illinois techs actually get there.

• Get certified and keep it current. The CST (Certified Surgical Technologist) credential through the NBSTSA is the baseline most Illinois hospital ORs expect. It separates you from on-the-job-trained scrubs and is often tied to a higher pay band.
• Specialize in a high-acuity service line. Cardiovascular, neuro, orthopedic, and robotic cases pay more because the skill is scarcer. Owning robotic-surgery setup and troubleshooting is one of the fastest ways into the experienced 75th-percentile range at $77,670.
• Move toward surgical first assistant. The CSFA credential and first-assist role sit near the top of the field. This is the realistic path to the 90th percentile at $91,890.
• Work in the Chicago metro. At a $66,360 median versus $59,470 in Peoria, the largest market also has the most high-acuity, level-one trauma centers where premium pay and call exist.
• Take call and trauma coverage. At the median hourly rate of $31.08, overtime pays $46.62 an hour. Consistent call and weekend coverage can add thousands without changing your base.
• Pick the right employer. Large academic and trauma hospitals generally pay above small outpatient surgery centers. The mean wage of $70,070 sitting above the $64,650 median tells you the top employers pull the average up.
• Build adjacent skills. Short courses in surgical anatomy, sterile processing leadership, or healthcare management through platforms like Coursera can support a move into lead, educator, or coordinator roles that pay above the staff scale.

The cleanest path for most techs is certify, then specialize, then chase the high-acuity Chicago facilities. Each step is a documented jump in the percentile table above, not a vague promise.

Job outlook for surgical techs in Illinois

Illinois employs about 3,570 surgical technologists, per BLS (2025). It’s a steady field tied directly to surgical volume, and surgical volume in a large, aging state like Illinois isn’t going anywhere. Hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, and outpatient clinics all need scrubbed-in techs for every procedure, which keeps demand consistent across economic cycles.

The Chicago metro concentrates 2,530 of those jobs, so that’s where the steadiest stream of openings sits, along with the most movement between facilities as techs chase specialty work and pay. Downstate markets are smaller and turn over less often, which can mean fewer openings but also less competition for the ones that exist. To see live postings and pay ranges by employer, a job board like ZipRecruiter is the quickest way to gauge what’s hiring in your metro right now.

Related and higher-paying roles in Illinois

If you’re weighing surgical tech against nearby healthcare roles in Illinois, here’s how the median pay stacks up against the $64,650 surgical tech median, using BLS (2025) Illinois figures.

A registered nurse in Illinois earns a median of $95,990, which is $31,340 more than a surgical technologist in Illinois. That’s the biggest jump available from the OR floor, and many surgical techs bridge to nursing through an RN program for exactly that reason. A medical assistant in Illinois earns a median of $46,090, which is $18,560 less than a surgical technologist in Illinois, so surgical tech is a clear step up from that role in both pay and clinical responsibility.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS (2025) for wages and employment; ThePayGuide tax model (2026) for take-home estimates. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.