Illinois has about 12.7 million residents. Registered nurses average $94,360 a year, 24th among the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Licensure
Nursing licenses in Illinois come from the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, advised by the Board of Nursing. The department's office is on West Washington Street in Springfield, telephone (888) 473-4858. Rules, applications and license lookup are at idfpr.illinois.gov.
Illinois is not in the Nurse Licensure Compact, though a bill has been before the legislature. A multistate license carries no authority here, and nurses apply to the department for an Illinois license by endorsement.
All five states on Illinois's borders are compact members: Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky and Indiana. Both the Chicago and the St. Louis metropolitan areas therefore straddle a licensing boundary, and a nurse living on the Indiana side of the Chicago market needs a separate Illinois license to work in the city.
Nurse practitioner practice
Illinois is in the reduced practice group. A 2017 amendment to the Nurse Practice Act created a full practice authority designation: an advanced practice registered nurse who completes a set number of clinical hours in collaboration with a physician, along with extra pharmacology coursework, may apply to practice without a written collaborative agreement. Those who have not met the requirements continue to work under one. See nurse practitioner practice authority.
Nursing education
The University of Illinois Chicago College of Nursing is the largest program in the state and teaches at campuses around it rather than only in Chicago. Rush University College of Nursing, Loyola University Chicago's Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing and DePaul University run substantial private and academic health center programs, Southern Illinois University serves the south, and the community college system, including the City Colleges of Chicago, supplies most associate degree graduates.
Pay and workforce
Chicago dominates the state's nursing market. Northwestern Memorial, Rush University Medical Center, the University of Chicago Medical Center, Advocate Health Care and Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital rank among the largest employers, and the metropolitan area carries a substantial share of the country's academic nursing research.
Downstate, the main centers are Springfield, Peoria, Rockford and the Illinois side of metropolitan St. Louis, with rural hospitals and critical access hospitals filling the space between them.
Nursing history
Florence Guinness Blake, a founder of modern pediatric nursing, trained at the Michael Reese Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago and went on to build the advanced pediatric nursing program at the University of Chicago, where she taught from 1946 until the school closed in 1959. Margie Oppenheimer, who first nursed as a teenage prisoner in the Riga ghetto, worked as a licensed practical nurse in Skokie from 1962 to 1991.
Related
- Licensure by endorsement
- Nurse Licensure Compact
- Nurse practitioner practice authority
- Collaborative practice agreements
- Nursing by state
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau, state population estimates for July 1, 2025. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, registered nurses (29-1141), May 2025. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, nursing, contact details and licensing information. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Nurse Licensure Compact, member states. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- American Association of Nurse Practitioners, State Practice Environment. Accessed September 8, 2026.