Job and Income Demographics in Illinois Counties in 2018
According to Data USA, in 2018 the overall median income for the entire state of Illinois was $65,030. Looking deeper, each county varied drastically in the amount of money a household made on average. Pulaski, the county with the lowest median household income, had a median of $33,799. The highest median income was recorded at $91,764 in Kendall County. An interactive Choropleth graph visualizing the separation of counties and their median incomes can be found on Datawrapper.
The three most common jobs held by residents of Illinois are “other managers”, driver/sales workers and truck drivers and finally registered nurses. The highest paid residents of Illinois are surgeons (on average they make $252,652), physicians ($228,241) and nuclear medicine technicians ($212,679).
What makes some counties richer than others? What are the residents doing for work at each end of the income spectrum? In DuPage County, one of the richest counties in Illinois, the highest paid jobs include Legal Occupations (bringing in an average of $101,079), Management Occupations($95,529) and Engineering and Architecture Occupations ($91,931).
Alternatively, Pulaski County’s highest paid jobs are Computer, Engineering, & Science Occupations (earning on average $121,500), Life, Physical and Social Science Occupations ($121,000) and Community and Social Service Occupations ($44,559). This came as a shock to me since the overall median income of this county is so much lower than all the rest. However, with there being such a large gap between the second and third highest paying occupation in the county, there is much room for a large number of lower-paid positions to affect the total median.
To try and make more sense of the all these numbers, there’s a chart showing the top 10 richest counties in Illinois along with the most common occupation in each one.
The median household income of Kendall County alone is 53% higher than the national median and 46% above the state median. Over 47% of households in the county earn over $100k yearly. Kendall County is included under the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce along with Kane, DuPage, Cook, Lake, McHenry and Will — considered the most urban areas of the state. According to Hunter Properties, the average cost of living in Chicago for a single person is about $980 (rent not included). That person, if renting a 45 square meter studio apartment, can expect to pay $3,043 a month altogether. In a year that’s $36,516 just for housing and food — although food prices are actually lower here than the national average. Therefore, any salary after that can be put toward emergencies, charities, extracurriculars, trips or simple wants. For a family of four, monthly expenses would be $3,500 before rent is considered. Also, you can expect to spend about 8.8% of your average monthly salary on transportation in the city. The majority of the money you can expect to spend in Chicago is going to be put toward rent payments as well as utilities — second would be transportation. It’s almost balanced out with the affordability of food. However, insurance rates can be very pricey (depending where you go you could risk spending over $2,000), so maybe consider getting a bike.
