Illinois’ top 50 state pensioners averaged $437,000 each last year
184 pensioners in Illinois’ five state-run systems received enough in 2025 to put them in the top 5% of U.S. income earners.
Illinois’ top 50 public pensioners took in an average of $437,000 each last year.
That’s roughly seven times the average annual salary in the state.
The biggest pension payout in 2025 was $747,000 to Dr. Konstantin Slavin, a University of Illinois-Chicago professor and board-certified neurosurgeon.
Dr. Slavin started receiving benefits at age 52 and has gotten more than $2.6 million in pension payments since he began receiving them in 2022. That’s more than double the total contributions he made to the system.
It appears that Dr. Slavin is working for UIC as a professor while receiving these payments. That could be allowed with certain restrictions under the State Universities Retirement System, including a 60-day waiting period from retirement to rehire and earnings limitations.
Last year, 184 pensioners in Illinois’ five state-run systems received enough to put them in the top 5% of income earners in the U.S.
Annual payments can reach these heights because of Tier 1’s benefit package, which includes an annual 3% compounding cost-of-living adjustment regardless of inflation. Employees hired before Jan. 1, 2011, get Tier 1 benefits.
Benefits for the five state systems are concentrated at the top. The highest-paid 10% of pensioners collected more than one-quarter of all benefits in 2025. Among the top 50, 42 were in the State Universities Retirement System and eight in the Teachers’ Retirement System.
In total, the top 50 pensioners have collected an average of $4.9 million each. That’s predicted to reach an average of $10 million over their lifetimes, more than 20 times their contributions.
The five statewide systems owe about $275 billion in promised benefits but hold only $131 billion in assets, meaning they’re just 47.8% funded.
Government employees aren’t to blame for taking part in a lucrative retirement system. The problem lies in lawmakers overpromising benefits.
Illinois’ pension crisis emerged out of the 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention, where an amendment was passed that would handcuff future lawmakers and stymie future reform. The 3% compounding COLA for Tier 1 recipients came in a 1989 bill sponsored by former House Speaker Michael Madigan and signed by then-Gov. Jim Thompson.
Pension contributions consume nearly one-fifth of the state’s budget, but even so, those annual contributions remain billions of dollars below what actuaries say is needed.
Promising benefits beyond what the state can afford puts an enormous burden on taxpayers.
Still, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has advocated raising Tier 2’s wage cap to Social Security levels even though Tier 2 benefits are already far more generous than what most people receive on Social Security. That would add $13 billion in accrued liability for the state by 2045 and push its pensions systems that much closer to insolvency.
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