Labor Market Pulse · Information Technology · September 2026
Information Technology Labor Market Report: Kankakee-Bradley, IL MSA — September 2026
Kankakee IT pay climbs despite a metro still losing jobs.
Metro cybersecurity pay hit $102,197 and network engineer pay reached $107,600 even as Kankakee payrolls fell 2.1% year-over-year and unemployment peaked at 7.0% in February.
Free archive edition. Published by WageScape as sent to subscribers; data as of September 2026.
Key indicators
- Kankakee unemployment rate: 7.0% (Feb 2026 peak) — Eased to 4.1% by July 2026, county-level
- Metro nonfarm payroll change: -2.1% YoY (-900 jobs) — Largest decline among Illinois metros, Sept 2025
- EV-battery facility investment: $2.0B / 2,600+ jobs — Major upcoming demand shock for skilled/technical labor
- Illinois statewide tech hiring growth: +11% MoM (Aug 2026) — Contrasts with Kankakee's contracting payroll base
Key takeaways
Cybersecurity pay is rising against a shrinking local economy.
Metro cybersecurity analyst pay climbed to $102,197 even as total metro payrolls fell 2.1% year-over-year, suggesting security hiring is driven by national scarcity and compliance pressure, not local demand conditions. Budget for this role against national trend lines, not Kankakee's broader hiring slowdown.
The EV-battery project is a wage-pressure event waiting to happen.
A $2 billion facility projected to add 2,600 jobs will pull skilled trades, electricians, and likely industrial-control and network technicians into direct competition with existing employers. IT leaders in manufacturing-adjacent sectors should model retention risk for infrastructure and OT-adjacent staff over the next two hiring cycles.
Network engineer pay outpaces systems administration locally.
Metro network engineer pay ($107,600) sits well above systems administrator pay ($93,256), a wider gap than typically seen in tighter labor markets, which may reflect scarcity of networking skill relative to general administration. This supports prioritizing retention spend on networking over generalist infrastructure roles.
Metro unemployment volatility complicates contract-labor assumptions.
Swings from 5.5% to 7.0% and back within the past year make it harder to assume a stable, available contractor pool for commodity IT functions. Outsourcing decisions built on assumed labor slack should be stress-tested against this volatility before locking into longer-term vendor commitments.
Median advertised pay by role — Kankakee-Bradley, IL MSA
| Role | 25th percentile | Median advertised pay | 75th percentile | Metro trend | National median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Data Scientist * | $113,377 | $143,567 | $162,000 | Moderate increase | $148,250 |
| Systems Administrator * | $79,260 | $93,256 | $104,477 | Moderate increase | $101,168 |
| Network Engineer * | $74,964 | $107,600 | $128,306 | Moderate increase | $114,400 |
| Software Engineer * | $112,123 | $151,902 | $166,866 | Moderate increase | $153,652 |
| Help Desk/IT Support Specialist | $51,653 | $54,080 | $62,229 | Moderate increase | $53,644 |
| Cybersecurity Analyst * | $87,500 | $102,197 | $118,050 | Moderate increase | $106,790 |
| IT Project Manager * | $85,062 | $119,186 | $130,019 | Stable | $117,530 |
* State-level figure shown where metro postings were too few.
WageScape's median is calibrated to correct for spurious low-value postings (reported as the 60th percentile of raw advertised pay). Download: CSV · JSON
Local market conditions
Kankakee's IT labor pool sits inside a metro economy still contracting on net — nonfarm payrolls fell 2.1% year-over-year and unemployment spiked to 7.0% in February before easing, even as the region's $2 billion EV-battery buildout and continued strength in healthcare, food processing, and biopharma generate parallel demand for infrastructure and support talent. That divergence — broad labor market softness alongside targeted capital investment — means IT hiring here is being shaped less by macro slack and more by a handful of large employers and projects absorbing technical capacity.
What it means
Advertised pay for cybersecurity analysts ($102,197) and network engineers ($107,600) in Kankakee is rising even as the metro's overall job base shrinks, a pattern consistent with specialized technical roles decoupling from local labor softness and tracking national scarcity instead. IT leaders planning headcount around the EV-battery facility or related manufacturing and logistics expansion should expect to compete against Chicago-adjacent compensation gravity for cloud, security, and network talent rather than local wage norms. Consider evaluating whether commodity support and systems administration functions — where metro pay growth is more moderate and candidate supply likely deeper — are better suited to contract or outsourced models, preserving premium compensation budget for the security and infrastructure roles tied directly to the region's new capital projects.
Looking ahead
Expected: Kankakee County's July 2026 unemployment reading of 4.1% suggests improvement from the February 7.0% peak; confirm whether September data extends that recovery before assuming the metro's labor softness has structurally reversed.
Emerging pressure point: EV-battery facility hiring will likely accelerate through Q4 2026, competing for electricians, controls technicians, and networking staff. Watch whether local IT infrastructure wages begin moving in tandem with manufacturing trades hiring.
Worth watching: Illinois' salary range disclosure requirement, now in effect statewide, reduces negotiation room on IT postings. Review current Kankakee-area job ads for compliance and competitive positioning against the metro medians reported this month.
Potential inflection point: Statewide WARN activity remains elevated (91 notices, 16,782 workers year-to-date) with no major Kankakee-specific filings yet. A spillover of released technical talent from Chicago-area layoffs (T-Mobile, GoHealth) into the regional candidate pool would ease local hiring pressure if it materializes.
Methodology
Advertised pay from active employer job postings, not survey data. WageScape's median is calibrated to correct for spurious low-value postings: distribution analysis shows roughly the lowest 10% of raw values are erroneous entries, so the reported median is the 60th percentile of raw advertised pay. WageScape observes 98% of U.S. job openings daily.
Free to read and cite with attribution to WageScape. Terms of use.