CNA jobs in Chicago: pay by county, who is hiring and how Illinois certifies a nursing assistant

A certified nursing assistant in the Chicago area earns more than a CNA almost anywhere else in Illinois, and the market is big: the state's wage survey counts 36,940 nursing assistants in the Chicago-Naperville-Schaumburg metropolitan division alone and about 43,010 across the three Illinois divisions of the metro, roughly 63% of the 68,640 CNAs in the state. This guide answers "CNA jobs in Chicago" with the figures that matter: what nursing assistants earn by county and metro division, how that compares with the aide, medical assistant and nurse roles beside them, where the open postings are right now, which settings hire the most, and exactly how Illinois certifies a CNA (there is no license: you are listed on a state registry after an approved program and a written exam).

What CNAs earn in Chicago

The Illinois Department of Employment Security publishes occupational wages for every metropolitan division and county in the state as part of the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program. Its 2025 edition (wages adjusted to the first quarter of 2025) reports an entry-level wage, a median and an experienced-level wage for nursing assistants. In the Chicago-Naperville-Schaumburg division, which covers the city, Cook County and most of the inner suburbs, the median CNA wage is $23.18 an hour ($48,212 a year), with entry-level pay at $19.94 and experienced pay at $24.60. The Lake County and Elgin divisions, the metro's northern and far-western suburbs, pay almost exactly the same.

Nationally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median for nursing assistants at $42,260 a year (May 2025), so a typical Chicago CNA earns about 14% more than a typical CNA in the country as a whole, and the Chicago median is $0.52 an hour above the Illinois median of $22.66. The gap between entry and experienced pay in the division is $4.66 an hour, which is what a few years of experience, a specialty unit or a night shift is worth in base pay before differentials. For the whole state ranking, see CNA pay by state; for the states and metros with the most jobs, where the CNA jobs are.

Pay by county

The county figures show how flat CNA pay is across the metro. Cook County, with three-quarters of the division's nursing assistants, sets the rate, and the collar counties sit within a few cents of it at the median. The experienced wage is a little higher in Kane and Cook than in Will and DuPage.

Chicago against the rest of Illinois

Leaving the metro costs a CNA real money. The same survey puts the median nursing assistant wage at $21.21 in Peoria, $19.79 in Rockford, $19.75 in Springfield and $19.67 in Champaign-Urbana, between $1.97 and $3.51 an hour below Chicago, or $4,084 to $7,317 a year at full time. Those metros also hold far fewer jobs: Peoria, the largest of them, employs 2,740 nursing assistants against the Chicago division's 36,940.

How CNA pay compares with the roles beside it

A nursing assistant in Chicago is paid at the top of the healthcare support group. In the Chicago-Naperville-Schaumburg division, healthcare support occupations as a whole (175,130 people) have a mean wage of $21.21 an hour and a median of $39,978 a year; nursing assistants earn $1.84 an hour more than the group mean and $8,234 a year more at the median, and almost exactly what a medical assistant earns. The home health and personal care aide occupation is more than twice the size of the CNA occupation and pays about $4.35 an hour less at the median; the step up to a practical nurse license is worth about $32,207 a year.

The federal survey tells the same story at the level of the whole metro. In the Bureau of Labor Statistics' May 2025 release on Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, healthcare support occupations average $20.79 an hour against $19.62 nationally, about 6% more, while the metro's all-occupation mean of $35.28 is 5% above the national $33.54. Support occupations are a smaller slice of Chicago's economy than of the nation's (4.5% of jobs against 5.1%), which is one reason the premium exists. These are survey wages, not offers: night and weekend differentials, overtime and sign-on bonuses sit on top and vary by employer, and how shift differentials work explains the usual structure.

Where the open CNA jobs are right now

Betterleap's job board counts open postings on hospital and health-system career sites. As of October 26, 2026, the city of Chicago and the suburbs the board lists separately carried 1,992 open healthcare postings, 1,166 of them in the city itself from 33 employers. Across Illinois, 252 of the state's 9,302 open postings were for nursing assistants, part of 4,907 CNA postings nationwide on the same date. The CNA jobs in Chicago hub is the place to start; every city below links to its live listings.

Hospital career sites are the smaller half of the CNA market. Nationally, the largest employer of nursing assistants is the skilled nursing facility (36% of the occupation) and hospitals come second (32%), with assisted living, home health and government making up most of the rest, so a Chicago search that stops at the health systems misses the nursing homes on the South and West Sides, the suburban continuing-care campuses and the home health agencies that together hire more CNAs than the hospitals do. Widen the board search to every CNA job in Illinois or the national CNA hub, and look at patient care technician jobs in Chicago, a hospital title that often asks for the same registry listing.

Health systems posting the most jobs in Illinois

Counted by open postings on each system's own career site, statewide, as of October 26, 2026. A system that lists every unit and shift separately ranks higher than one that posts one evergreen requisition per role, and two of the biggest posters are downstate.

Which settings hire CNAs and what they pay

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the employer mix and the median wage by setting for nursing assistants nationally (May 2025). The setting that hires the most is not the lowest paid: skilled nursing facilities pay a little more at the median than hospitals, and government employers pay the most of all. Home health pays the least and is also the smallest of the big five.

Two things follow for Chicago. First, a Cook County or state-run facility is worth a look if pay is the priority. Second, hospital CNA and patient care technician jobs tend to come with the differentials, tuition help and internal ladders to an LPN or RN program that a nursing home rarely offers, and the Chicago division's practical nurses earn $80,419 at the median; how to become a nurse in Illinois covers that route.

How to become a CNA in Illinois

Illinois does not issue a CNA license or certificate. The credential is a listing on the Illinois Department of Public Health's Health Care Worker Registry, which records that you met the training requirement and passed the state competency exam and that your background check turned up no disqualifying conviction. Employers must check the registry before letting you work as a nursing assistant, and the registry, not a certificate, is what keeps you certified. The main routes onto it:

• An approved training program plus the written exam. You complete a Basic Nurse Assistant Training Program that IDPH has approved; the department's list of approved programs runs to 906 statewide, 113 of them in the city of Chicago, at community colleges, high schools, hospitals, nursing homes and private academies. The program submits your record to the testing contractor, Illinois Nurse Aide Testing at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and you buy a seat for the Illinois Nurse Assistant Competency Exam at one of about 50 test sites in the state, computer-based where available. You have 12 months from the day you finish the program to pass, and 3 attempts; after a third failure you must repeat a training program before testing again. The exam is pass or fail and the cut score is not published.
• Fees. The exam costs $85, a retake after a failure $85, and rescheduling after a no-show $55 (fee schedule in force since July 2023, no refunds). Training program tuition is set by each program and is not a state fee.
• Nursing students. A student who has passed fundamentals of nursing and at least 40 hours of supervised clinical practice in an accredited nursing program can take the exam and work as a CNA while finishing school. A nurse with a current, active Illinois RN or LPN license can work as a CNA without being on the registry at all, but an out-of-state or inactive nursing license does not count.
• CNAs from another state. If you are active and in good standing on another state's nurse aide registry, with no findings of abuse, neglect or misappropriation, you transfer by mailing the out-of-state application and a $25 money order to the testing program; the registry must show you as active in your home state when the application is reviewed. Military medics and corpsmen and foreign-trained nurses have their own paths, each ending in the written exam.
• Keeping it. Certification lapses after 24 consecutive months without paid nursing or nursing-related work. To reinstate it you file the recertification form with the testing program, which checks your registry record and lets you buy an exam seat; you then have a year and three attempts to pass, at the same fees. There is no renewal fee while you are working: your employer's record of your employment dates in the registry is what keeps you active.
• Working in a nursing home. A licensed long-term care facility may hire you before you are certified, but you must be enrolled in an approved program within 45 days of hire and on the registry within 120 days, you must be at least 16, and under federal rules you must complete 16 hours of classroom training before any direct contact with a resident. Every employer covered by the Health Care Worker Background Check Act needs a criminal history check with no disqualifying conviction, or a waiver granted by IDPH, before you give direct care.

Chicago sits on the Indiana line, and the registry is state-specific: a CNA who lives in Hammond and works in the city needs to be on the Illinois registry, and a Chicago CNA taking a job in northwest Indiana transfers to Indiana's. For nurses, the nursing jobs in Chicago guide covers the licensing rules on both sides of the line.

Outlook for nursing assistants

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment of nursing assistants and orderlies to grow 3% between 2025 and 2035, about as fast as the average for all occupations, from 1,558,700 jobs in 2025 (an increase of 41,100), with about 203,300 openings a year over the decade, most of them to replace nursing assistants who move to other occupations or leave the workforce rather than new positions. The projections are national, not by metro, and apply to Chicago as to anywhere else; locally the number to watch is the size of the home health and personal care aide occupation, which is where much of the growth in direct care is landing. If you are weighing the step up, how to become an LPN sets out the practical nurse route in one state and LPN salary by state puts Illinois in the national ranking.

Sources

• Illinois Department of Employment Security, Wage Information: Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), 2025 edition (statewide, metropolitan division and county tables; wages adjusted to the first quarter of 2025), read 14 November 2026.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Midwest Information Office, Occupational Employment and Wages in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, May 2025, released 23 July 2026, read 14 November 2026.
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Nursing Assistants and Orderlies, 2025 pay and 2025-35 projections, read 14 November 2026.
• Illinois Department of Public Health, CNA Facts and the Health Care Worker Registry, with its list of approved CNA training programs, current rules, read 14 November 2026.
• Illinois Nurse Aide Testing, Southern Illinois University Carbondale for the Illinois Department of Public Health: Fee Schedule (effective 1 July 2023), Basic Nurse Assistant Training Program, Out-of-State CNA Application, Recertification Process and Employment Requirements, read 14 November 2026.
• Betterleap job board, open postings on hospital and health-system career sites for Chicago, its suburbs, Illinois and the nation, counted October 26, 2026.