The median advertised pay for a travel PACU (post-anesthesia care unit) contract in Illinois is $2,259 per week, with the middle half between $2,196 and $2,298. Measured across 4 active travel PACU contracts in Illinois at 4 facilities, as of 2026-10-30.
Advertised weekly totals before tax, usually including tax-free stipends; for almost all postings the top of an advertised range. Not take-home. With only 4 open contracts in Illinois, treat that median as an indication rather than a rate: the contracts below are the useful part of this page.
That is 8 percent under the $2,455 national median for travel PACU 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, and the compact checker tells you whether yours covers you here.
| Weekly rate | Open contracts |
|---|---|
| $2,100 to $2,150 | 1 |
| $2,150 to $2,200 | 0 |
| $2,200 to $2,250 | 1 |
| $2,250 to $2,300 | 1 |
| $2,300 to $2,350 | 1 |
| $2,350 to $2,400 | 0 |
All 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lake Forest | 1 | $2,308 | $2,340/mo |
| Peoria | 1 | $2,114 | $790/mo |
| Springfield | 1 | $2,224 | $930/mo |
| Winfield | 1 | $2,294 | — |
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 PACU assignments in Illinois.
All 36 states with PACU openings