Chicago IT Jobs by Role: What BLS Employment Counts

What do the BLS figures say about Chicago IT jobs by role?

BLS's May 2025 estimates for six IT occupations in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN metropolitan area range from 3,480 jobs for Information Security Analysts to 24,950 for Computer and Information Systems Managers. BLS's May 2025 estimate, read on 2026-10-14, puts employment for Computer User Support Specialists in the Chicago metro area at 19,680 across every employer.

The figures come from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program. BLS released them on 2026-05-15 (news release USDL-26-0725), and we read them through the BLS Public Data API on 2026-10-14. The BLS release page carries the published tables. BLS attached no footnotes to any of the six figures.

Beside the two ends of the range, BLS prints 4,740 for Computer Network Support Specialists, 6,950 for Network and Computer Systems Administrators and 14,660 for Computer Systems Analysts. The table lists the occupations in the order our sheet holds them.

How does BLS define each of the six occupations?

BLS defines each occupation in a single sentence, and the sentences are broad. The definitions below are quoted as BLS prints them, as we read them on 2026-10-14.

Computer User Support Specialists (15-1232): "Provide technical assistance to computer users." Computer Network Support Specialists (15-1231): "Analyze, test, troubleshoot, and evaluate existing network systems, such as local area networks (LAN), wide area networks (WAN), cloud networks, servers, and other data communications networks." Network and Computer Systems Administrators (15-1244): "Install, configure, and maintain an organization's local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN), data communications network, operating systems, and physical and virtual servers."

Information Security Analysts (15-1212): "Plan, implement, upgrade, or monitor security measures for the protection of computer networks and information." Computer and Information Systems Managers (11-3021): "Plan, direct, or coordinate activities in such fields as electronic data processing, information systems, systems analysis, and computer programming." Computer Systems Analysts (15-1211): "Analyze science, engineering, business, and other data processing problems to develop and implement solutions to complex applications problems, system administration issues, or network concerns."

BLS's definition of Computer User Support Specialists is short and general, so the label does not map one-to-one onto a help desk tier.

The practical consequence for a buyer is that a BLS occupation name is a statistical category. A provider may split, combine or rename the same work in its own org chart, and BLS's wording gives no way to tell which.

Does a BLS employment estimate show how Chicago IT providers staff their service?

No. Each figure counts jobs in an occupation at every employer in the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin area, so it says nothing about how many people Chicago IT providers employ or how any provider staffs its service. A BLS figure counts jobs in an occupation at every employer in the metro area, read on 2026-10-14, so it says nothing about IT provider headcount.

An in-house IT department at a manufacturer, a school or a clinic falls inside the same estimate as a provider's technician if the job fits the occupation. The estimate also carries no breakdown of who employs whom. We therefore never read it as a measure of what a Chicago provider staffs, and never as a measure of what a provider charges.

Provider-level questions belong to our vendor database and to what providers state about themselves. For that side, see Help Desk Claims in Chicago: What Our Data Shows. We also hold that right-sizing matters more than headcount, so a large occupation count in a metro table is no argument for choosing a larger provider.

If you are evaluating a provider's team, ask for facts about that provider. Ask who answers a first call, what that person's role is called in the provider's own terms, and which problems are handed to someone else. A BLS table cannot answer any of those.

What should a buyer take from the smallest and largest figures?

Take only what the printed numbers state: Information Security Analysts has the smallest of the six figures at 3,480, and Computer and Information Systems Managers has the largest at 24,950 (BLS May 2025 estimates, read 2026-10-14). BLS's estimate for Information Security Analysts in the metro area is 3,480, the smallest of the six printed figures on our sheet, which we state as a comparison of printed figures and not as a shortage or trend.

The smallest figure is not evidence that security expertise is scarce in Chicago, and we make no such claim. We read no direction into a single estimate for a single reference period, and it sits beside five occupations that BLS defines very differently. A security analyst's job, as BLS words it, is to plan, implement, upgrade or monitor security measures; the count of such jobs alone does not describe how much protection any organization has.

The largest figure belongs to an occupation BLS defines as planning, directing or coordinating activities in fields such as electronic data processing and information systems. A manager's title in that estimate can sit at an employer of any size or type, so it should not be read as a count of IT leaders at small and midsize businesses.

Two cautions apply to every comparison here. We have not added the six figures together, because the occupations were chosen for this sheet and are not the whole of IT work. We have not expressed any figure as a share of another, because BLS does not print one.

How we read these figures, and what they leave out

Our sheet holds BLS's May 2025 reference-period estimates for the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN metropolitan area (BLS area code 16980). Each employment figure is read from its own series through the Application Programming Interface (API) at the BLS Public Data API. Our read date was 2026-10-14. The employment series identifiers are below so that anyone can check a figure against BLS directly.

Chicago metro IT employment is not a single BLS number, and we do not construct one. The release also prints wage estimates for these same occupations. We leave them out here on purpose: a wage is not the fully loaded cost of an employee, and it is not a price for a managed IT service. Our companion piece, Chicago IT Wages Mean vs Median: Six BLS Occupations, reads wages as BLS prints them.

Three limits stay with every figure above. It is a survey estimate, not a count we made. It carries one reference period, May 2025, and we read no direction or trend into it. It names no firm and is not a figure about any IT provider, so it supports no reason to choose or avoid any of them.