Chicago IT Wages Mean vs Median: Six BLS Occupations

What do mean and median annual wages measure?

The mean annual wage is the average across an occupation's jobs, and the median annual wage is the midpoint: half of those jobs pay less and half pay more. The two answer different questions, which is why a wage table that prints both is more useful than one that prints either alone.

The figures come from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program. They cover the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN metropolitan area (BLS area code 16980) for the May 2025 reference period, released on 2026-05-15 in news release USDL-26-0725 on the BLS release page. We read them through the BLS Public Data API (Application Programming Interface) on 2026-10-14.

We print the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics mean and median annual wages for May 2025 exactly as published, without recalculation.

The published figures carry no footnotes, so nothing in the table below is marked as suppressed or flagged. Each row is a survey estimate across every employer in the metro area. It is not a count we made, and it is not a figure about IT providers.

What does BLS estimate for six Chicago IT occupations?

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts Computer and Information Systems Managers highest, at a $184,810 mean and $173,760 median annual wage. The lowest pair belongs to Computer User Support Specialists, at a $65,640 mean and $60,730 median.

The table below carries all six occupations for the Chicago metro area, May 2025 reference period, read through the BLS API on 2026-10-14 (source). It adds the mean hourly wage and the employment estimate, meaning estimated jobs in that occupation. Our sheet carries no median hourly wage, so we print none.

The occupation names are Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) definitions, not provider job titles. Under that classification, Computer User Support Specialists (15-1232) provide technical assistance to computer users, and Information Security Analysts (15-1212) plan, implement, upgrade, or monitor security measures for the protection of computer networks and information. A given employer's role may straddle several definitions, so match a job description to the SOC wording before drawing on a row.

Why does the mean sit above the median in every row?

A mean counts every wage in full, so unusually high wages pull it upward, while a median marks the midpoint and does not move with how large the top values are. Mean above median is consistent with some high wages stretching the upper end of each occupation. That is a general property of the two measures, not something we can confirm here, because the published estimates do not show the spread of wages inside an occupation.

For Computer User Support Specialists, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates a mean annual wage of $65,640 and a median of $60,730.

Those figures are for the May 2025 reference period, read through the BLS API on 2026-10-14, and the same ordering, mean above median, holds in all five other rows of the table.

We deliberately compute no gaps. A difference or ratio that we worked out would be a number BLS never published, and a reader could mistake it for an official one. We also compute no averages across occupations. Support work and management work sit in the same table but are different jobs, and averaging them would produce a figure that describes no actual role.

If you need to judge a pay range, read the mean and median together, and read each row against its definition. Treat a mean-only figure with caution when you cannot see the median beside it.

Can a BLS wage stand in for an employee's cost or a provider's price?

No. A wage is not the fully loaded cost of an employee, and it is not the price of a managed IT service.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage estimates exclude benefits, payroll taxes, overhead, training, turnover and management time, so they are not an employee's cost.

Each of those items comes on top of the wage, and the figures we read on 2026-10-14 (May 2025 reference period, BLS release page) contain none of them. Setting a wage beside a provider's monthly price, or working out an in-house versus outsourced saving from it, would compare two things that were never built to be compared.

Our Price Comparison position is that a price without its scope is misleading. A wage with no scope attached gives a Chicago buyer no basis for judging an outsourced IT price. The useful questions about a proposal are what the price includes, what it excludes, and what happens when something falls outside it. Our guides on Chicago pricing models for outsourced IT and the IT scope checklist walk through those questions. For the broader cost conversation, see our piece on in-house IT versus outsourced MSP cost.

How should a Chicago buyer read these figures?

Read them as a dated, metro-wide labor reference and nothing more: they say nothing about any one provider's staffing, pay or pricing.

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin figures are survey estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics across every employer in the metro area, not provider counts.

A few habits keep the table honest. Quote the reference period (May 2025) and the date you read it (2026-10-14 for ours) whenever you cite a figure. Match your job description to the SOC definition before using a row. Use the median when you want a typical midpoint and the mean when you want the average, and avoid mixing them in one sentence. To check our figures, pull the series yourself. For example, the mean annual wage for Computer User Support Specialists is series OEUM001698000000015123204.

When you evaluate an outsourced IT proposal, ask for its scope in writing, and ask how long the term runs and how you can exit it. We hold that shorter agreements generally favor the buyer, and our contract length explainer covers the trade-offs. A wage estimate is not an input to that judgment.

One limit is worth stating plainly. This is a single reference period, and wages move. We have not read earlier periods, so we draw no trend from these six rows.