The median advertised pay for a travel OR (operating room) contract in Illinois is $2,654 per week, with the middle half between $2,443 and $2,953. Measured across 18 active travel OR contracts in Illinois at 11 facilities, as of 2026-09-15.
Advertised weekly totals, taxable base plus tax-free stipends. Not take-home.
That is 2 percent over the $2,601 national median for travel OR 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 $2,200 | 2 |
| $2,200 to $2,400 | 2 |
| $2,400 to $2,600 | 3 |
| $2,600 to $2,800 | 4 |
| $2,800 to $3,000 | 4 |
| $3,000 to $3,200 | 0 |
| $3,200 to $3,400 | 2 |
| $3,400 and up | 1 |
All 18 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicago | 3 | $2,525 | $1,590/mo |
| Rockford | 3 | $2,973 | $890/mo |
| Springfield | 3 | $3,297 | $930/mo |
| Carbondale | 2 | $2,608 | $790/mo |
| Urbana | 2 | $2,298 | $870/mo |
| Lake Forest | 1 | $3,730 | $2,340/mo |
| Mchenry | 1 | $2,637 | $1,690/mo |
| Normal | 1 | $2,415 | $790/mo |
| Palos Heights | 1 | $2,892 | — |
| Peoria | 1 | $2,188 | $790/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 OR 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.
All 44 states with OR openings