The median advertised pay for a travel CVICU (cardiovascular intensive care unit) contract in Illinois is $2,781 per week, with the middle half between $2,723 and $2,824. Measured across 11 active travel CVICU contracts in Illinois at 4 facilities, as of 2026-09-15.
Advertised weekly totals, taxable base plus tax-free stipends. Not take-home.
That is 12 percent over the $2,476 national median for travel CVICU contracts.
Illinois is not a Nurse Licensure Compact state, so you need a Illinois license to work here even if you hold a multistate license. The compact state list explains which states issue one.
| Weekly rate | Open contracts |
|---|---|
| Under $2,600 | 1 |
| $2,600 to $2,650 | 0 |
| $2,650 to $2,700 | 2 |
| $2,700 to $2,750 | 0 |
| $2,750 to $2,800 | 5 |
| $2,800 to $2,850 | 0 |
| $2,850 to $2,900 | 2 |
| $2,900 and up | 1 |
All 11 open contracts, banded by advertised weekly rate. The outer bands are open-ended so nothing falls outside the chart.
Illinois has the 19th highest price level of the 51 states and territories the Bureau of Economic Analysis measures: 0 percent under the national average overall. The premium is concentrated in housing, at 6 percent under, while goods sit 4 percent over and services 0 percent over. That matters more than the headline number, because housing is the part a tax-free stipend is meant to cover and the rest comes out of taxed wages.
| Metro | Open contracts | Median weekly | Rent, 1 bed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Urbana | 5 | $2,858 | $870/mo |
| Peoria | 3 | $2,791 | $790/mo |
| Springfield | 2 | $2,688 | $930/mo |
| Rockford | 1 | $2,430 | $890/mo |
Rent is the one-bedroom Fair Market Rent HUD publishes for that metro, which is what a housing stipend is trying to cover. The open-contract count beside each metro is the sample its median rests on, and outside the largest markets that sample is small: a median over one or two contracts is a single posting's rate rather than a market rate, so read the count first.
Browse the board for current CVICU assignments in Illinois.
Drawn from the postings that state a requirement, which is not all of them, so each figure carries the number it was measured from. Your recruiter confirms the specifics for a given contract before submission.