State government salaries have grown 57% faster than private sector since 2021
State employees represented by AFSCME Council 31 received an automatic annual raise on July 1, highlighting the salary discrepancy between government and private sector workers.
It pays to be a state employee in Illinois.
July brought “pay raise day” for the tens of thousands of state employees represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31.
But it’s also the month which emphasizes the salary discrepancy between government workers and every other worker in Illinois.
Since 2021, state government worker salaries have grown 57% faster than pay for workers in the private sector.
As of 2024, the average Illinois state employee made $85,689 compared to an average of $78,267 in the private sector, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Survey of Employment and Wages data. That’s a $7,422, or 9.5%, difference.
The July 2025 raise was just part of a total 19.28% pay hike agreed to by Gov. J.B. Pritzker when he approved the state’s contract with AFSCME Council 31 in 2023. The agreement provides an automatic raise of 2.5% to 4.0% for each year of the contract. Compounded annually, that’s 19.28%.
No matter what happens to the economy and the private sector, the state is committed under the contract to raises that outpace what other workers are earning. Between 2023 and 2026, these AFSCME raises are expected to outpace private sector raises by 51%.
Despite the pay raises, government workers don’t seem overly pleased with AFSCME Council 31. The union claims to represent more than 90,000 state and local government employees in Illinois. Yet not even 60,000 of those workers are members of the union, according to the union’s annual LM-2 report to the federal government.
That means more than 1-in-3 workers have rejected membership in AFSCME Council 31.
Questionable spending practices and lack of accountability could be reasons workers don’t want to affiliate with AFSCME Council 31. Plus AFSCME workers are also taxpayers. They also experience how costly government contracts lead to tax hikes in Illinois.