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

A radiologic technologist in Illinois earns a median of $79,930 a year, or about $38.43 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most rad techs in the state land between $59,350 at the 10th percentile and $104,210 at the 90th. That puts the typical Illinois rad tech just below the national median of $80,110, with the gap closing fast once you reach the higher percentiles.

How Illinois compares to the national rad tech salary

Illinois pays a radiologic technologist a median of $79,930 a year. The national median, per the BLS, is $80,110. So the typical Illinois rad tech earns $180 less than the national figure. That’s a rounding error in practical terms. Illinois is essentially a middle-of-the-pack state for this role, which is what you’d expect from a state that blends a high-cost metro like Chicago with much cheaper downstate markets.

The mean (average) annual wage in Illinois is $80,770, a touch above the median. When the mean sits above the median, it tells you a cluster of higher earners is pulling the average up. You see that here at the top of the range, where the 90th percentile reaches $104,210. That’s the number to keep in mind when you read claims that rad techs “top out” in the seventies. In Illinois, the senior tenth of the field clears six figures.

Here’s the full Illinois percentile spread from the BLS, so you can place any offer you get against real state data rather than a national average that may not reflect your market.

The spread from the 10th to the 90th percentile is nearly $45,000. That’s a wide band, and it’s mostly explained by three things: years on the job, the modalities you’re credentialed in, and which metro you work in. We’ll break down each of those below so you can see where your own number should sit.

Radiologic technologist salary in Illinois by experience

Experience is the single biggest lever on rad tech pay in Illinois, and the percentile data tracks it cleanly. A new graduate stepping into a first staff job tends to start near the 10th percentile. From there, pay climbs as you log clinical hours, pass additional ARRT certifications, and move into specialized modalities like CT, MRI, or mammography.

Read the table as a career arc. The jump from entry ($59,350) to early career ($66,000) is about $6,650, and it usually comes within the first two to three years as you shed your “new grad” status and stop needing a preceptor. The bigger move is from early career to the median, a $13,930 climb. That’s where cross-training pays off. A general X-ray tech who adds CT or MRI credentials becomes far more useful to a hospital that wants one person who can cover multiple rooms, and that flexibility shows up in the paycheck.

The stretch from the median to experienced ($97,950) is another $18,020. By this stage you’re typically a confident multi-modality tech, often picking up call pay, weekend differentials, or a lead role. The final step to the senior 90th percentile ($104,210) is a smaller $6,260, and it’s usually the territory of charge techs, MRI or interventional specialists, and people who’ve stacked overtime and shift differentials onto an already strong base. The takeaway: the fastest pay growth happens in the middle of the career, between the 25th and 75th percentiles, where adding modalities matters more than anything else.

It’s worth converting these annual figures into hourly terms, because that’s how most rad tech jobs are actually paid and how you’ll compare offers. The entry 10th percentile of $59,350 works out to $28.53 an hour on a standard 2,080-hour year. The early-career 25th percentile of $66,000 is $31.73. The median of $79,930 is the headline $38.43. The experienced 75th percentile of $97,950 reaches $47.09, and the senior 90th percentile of $104,210 lands at $50.10 an hour. That $50 line is a useful mental benchmark in Illinois: once your base rate crosses it, you’re in the top tenth of the state for this role, and the lift from there is usually overtime and differentials rather than base.

One more way to read the experience curve: the total distance from entry to senior is $44,860 a year, the full $59,350 to $104,210 spread. Roughly $20,580 of that, almost half, sits between entry and the median. That’s the part you control most directly through credentials in the first five to seven years. The back half of the curve, from median to senior, is $24,280, and it leans more on role (lead, charge, interventional) and willingness to take call. Neither half happens automatically. The techs who stall at the median are usually the ones who stayed single-modality and avoided nights, not the ones who ran out of room to grow.

Radiologic technologist salary in Illinois by metro

Where you work inside Illinois changes the number more than most people expect. The same credential can be worth $15,000 more in metro Chicago than in a university town downstate. Here are the five largest Illinois metro areas for this role, with the local median and how many rad techs the BLS counts there.

Chicago dominates. The Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro pays a median of $82,140, the highest in the state and $2,210 above the statewide median of $79,930. It also employs 5,650 of the state’s 7,650 rad techs, so roughly three in four Illinois rad tech jobs sit in or around Chicago. If you want the most openings and the strongest pay, that’s where the market is. The trade-off is cost of living, which we cover in the take-home section.

Downstate, the picture is more modest but still solid. Springfield ($77,800), Peoria ($76,490), and Rockford ($75,500) all cluster within a few thousand dollars of each other, sitting a little below the state median. These are smaller markets, with 210 to 310 rad tech jobs apiece, anchored by regional hospital systems. Champaign-Urbana is the outlier on the low end at $66,760, which is more than $15,000 under the Chicago figure. A median that low in a college town often reflects a younger, earlier-career workforce and a heavier mix of outpatient and clinic roles rather than high-acuity hospital work. If you trained in Champaign and want to maximize pay, relocating north is the clearest path.

Put the metro gaps in dollar terms, because they’re larger than most people assume. The spread from the top metro (Chicago, $82,140) to the bottom (Champaign-Urbana, $66,760) is $15,380 a year on the exact same credential. That’s bigger than the jump from entry to early career on the experience curve. In other words, geography inside Illinois can move your pay as much as several years of experience. Springfield, at $77,800, is the strongest downstate option and trails Chicago by only $4,340, which can be an easy trade if downstate housing costs are meaningfully lower for you. Peoria and Rockford sit close behind at $76,490 and $75,500, both within about $6,600 of the Chicago median.

The employment counts tell their own story about where the bargaining power is. Chicago’s 5,650 jobs against the next-largest market’s 310 (Peoria) means the negotiating dynamics are completely different. In a deep market like Chicago, you can credibly walk if an offer comes in low, because another hospital is hiring nearby. In a 210-job market like Springfield or Champaign-Urbana, a single health system often sets the local rate, and your bargaining power comes from credentials and willingness to relocate rather than from playing employers against each other. If you’re early career and flexible, starting downstate to build modality experience and then moving to Chicago for the pay bump is a well-worn and rational path.

Illinois rad tech take-home pay after taxes

Gross salary is the headline. Take-home is what actually hits your account. Illinois charges a flat state income tax, so unlike states with brackets, your state rate doesn’t climb as you earn more. The table below runs four points along the rad tech pay scale through federal income tax, FICA (Social Security and Medicare), and Illinois state tax, using 2026 tax assumptions for a single filer.

At the median, a $79,930 salary nets out to $60,660 a year, or about $5,055 a month, after an effective tax rate of 24.1%. Entry techs at $59,350 keep $46,788 (a 21.2% effective rate), and senior techs at $104,210 keep $76,539, where the effective rate rises to 26.6%. The reason the rate climbs even though Illinois tax is flat: federal income tax is progressive, so a larger share of each higher dollar goes to the IRS.

Watch what happens to the actual dollars as you climb. Entry to senior is a $44,860 gain in gross pay ($59,350 to $104,210), but only $29,751 of it survives to net ($46,788 to $76,539). So about a third of every raise across that range goes to taxes. That’s not a reason to stop chasing raises; you still keep two-thirds. But it’s why the take-home gap between stages feels smaller than the salary gap. The experienced-to-senior step is the clearest example: $6,260 more in gross ($97,950 to $104,210) becomes $4,094 more in net ($72,445 to $76,539), because that top slice of income is taxed at the highest federal rate you face.

The Illinois state line is the most predictable piece. Because the state tax is flat, it scales almost in lockstep with income: $2,938 at entry, $3,957 at the median, $4,849 at the experienced level, and $5,158 at senior. There’s no bracket cliff to plan around, which makes Illinois take-home easy to forecast. FICA behaves similarly until you’d hit the Social Security wage cap, which none of these rad tech figures reach, so FICA simply tracks gross: $4,540 at entry up to $7,972 at senior.

Now the comparison that matters most if you’re weighing a move. Take that same median rad tech salary to Texas, which has no state income tax. In Illinois, the median net is $60,660. In Texas, the same gross nets $64,617. That’s a gap of $3,957 a year, money Illinois claws back through its flat state tax that a Texas tech simply keeps. Over a decade, that’s close to $40,000 in lifetime difference on the median salary alone.

Before you book a moving truck, though, run the next step: net pay minus local housing is the number that actually matters. Texas keeps more of your gross, but a metro like Austin or Dallas can erase that $3,957 edge in a couple of months of rent. The honest way to compare two offers is to subtract your expected housing cost from your net take-home in each place, then see which leaves more. A no-tax state with expensive housing can leave you poorer than Illinois with cheaper rent downstate. Run your own numbers through the Illinois paycheck calculator, and if you want help modeling deductions or a multi-state filing year, TurboTax walks through both clearly.

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How to earn more as a rad tech in Illinois

The percentile data points to clear, concrete moves. The difference between the median ($79,930) and the experienced 75th percentile ($97,950) is $18,020 a year, and most of that is earned, not waited for. Here’s how Illinois rad techs close that gap.

• Cross-train into a second modality. A general X-ray tech who adds CT, MRI, or mammography becomes the person a hospital can slot into multiple rooms. Each ARRT post-primary certification is a documented reason to ask for more, and it’s the single biggest driver of the jump from the 25th to the 75th percentile.
• Target interventional and MRI roles. These are the modalities that cluster at the top of the Illinois range near $104,210. Interventional radiology and MRI specialists carry call responsibilities and scarcer skills, and the pay reflects it.
• Move toward Chicago. The Chicago metro median ($82,140) sits $2,210 above the state median and more than $15,000 above Champaign-Urbana ($66,760). If you’re downstate and early in your career, relocating north is the fastest geographic raise available.
• Chase shift differentials and call pay. Nights, weekends, and on-call rotations add differentials on top of base. Senior techs at the 90th percentile often get there by stacking these onto an already strong rate rather than by base alone.
• Step into a lead or charge tech role. Supervisory positions pay above the line techs they oversee and are a common bridge into the experienced and senior percentiles.
• Keep credentials current with structured coursework. Continuing education and prep for additional ARRT exams can be done around a full-time schedule. Platforms like Coursera offer healthcare and imaging coursework you can fit between shifts to build toward your next certification.

Job outlook for rad techs in Illinois

Illinois employs about 7,650 radiologic technologists, per the BLS, with the large majority (5,650) concentrated in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin metro. That concentration matters for job security and mobility: a dense market means more employers competing for the same credential, which supports both pay and the ability to switch jobs without relocating.

Demand for imaging is tied to an aging population and the steady growth of outpatient diagnostic centers, both of which point to continued hiring across hospital systems and freestanding imaging clinics. Downstate markets like Peoria, Springfield, and Rockford are smaller but stable, anchored by regional health systems that consistently need techs across X-ray, CT, and MRI. When you’re ready to see live openings and local pay ranges in your metro, a board like ZipRecruiter lets you filter by modality and city across Illinois.

Related and higher-paying roles in Illinois

If you’re a rad tech weighing your next credential, it helps to see what neighboring imaging and nursing roles pay in the same state. Both of the closest related roles in Illinois pay more than a radiologic technologist’s $79,930 median, which makes them natural upgrade paths.

A diagnostic medical sonographer in Illinois earns a median of $100,660, which is $20,730 more than a radiologic technologist in Illinois. Sonography (ultrasound) is one of the most common cross-over moves for rad techs, and the pay gap explains why. A registered nurse in Illinois earns a median of $95,990, which is $16,060 more than a radiologic technologist in Illinois. Nursing is a longer educational path, but it opens a far wider range of specialties and advancement.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025 (SOC 29-2034); take-home estimates use 2026 federal and Illinois tax assumptions for a single filer. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.