Workers across the Chicago metropolitan area earned an average of $35.28 an hour in May 2025, against $33.54 nationally. The premium is real, and for the seats a CPA firm actually fills it is thinner than that gap suggests.
What is not thin is everything the city and the state stack on top of that wage. A Chicago firm weighing outsourced accounting services against another local hire is comparing two things a national cost model prices identically and Illinois does not: leave that accrues by ordinance, a payout rule at separation, and a licensing line that decides what an outside provider may be called on your engagement letters.
The Chicago Seat, Priced Locally
Start with the wage, because it is the input most likely to be assumed rather than looked up. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes wage estimates for the Chicago metropolitan area separately from its national table, and the premium is not the same size at every level of the survey.
A major occupational group is the survey's broad grouping, the level at which accountants and auditors sit inside business and financial operations, and bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks sit inside office and administrative support. The Chicago figures sit against the national ones like this.
| Occupational group | Chicago mean hourly wage | US mean hourly wage |
|---|---|---|
| All occupations | $35.28 | $33.54 |
| Business and financial operations | $46.54 | $45.78 |
| Office and administrative support | $25.82 | $24.79 |
| Source: BLS, Occupational Employment and Wages in Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, May 2025, mean hourly wages across all industries. |
Chicago sits above the country on all occupations taken together, and by the widest margin of the three rows. The narrowest margin belongs to business and financial operations, the group holding your preparers and your seniors. A local hiring premium priced off the metro's general wage premium overstates what the accounting seat itself costs here.
Treat these as direction, not as a pay band. They are group means across every industry in the area, so they blend a controller at a manufacturer with a staff accountant at a two-partner practice. Pull the occupation-level estimate for the seat you are actually hiring from the Bureau's estimates for the Chicago metropolitan area before you price anything against a provider quote.
The rest of the arithmetic is not local at all. How to gross a wage up to a loaded seat, why the hours divisor decides more than the wage, and the double count that ruins most of these models are already worked out in the offshore staffing cost calculator. Use that method and swap the Chicago row in.
What Illinois and Chicago Add on Top of the Wage
Here the national model stops being useful. A benefit gross-up built from national averages carries no line for the leave an Illinois or Chicago employer has to grant by law, and the state and the city do not impose the same one.
Under the Illinois Paid Leave for All Workers Act, employees earn at least one hour of paid time off for every 40 hours worked, up to 40 hours in a 12-month period, and the leave can be taken for any reason (Illinois Department of Labor). The Act went into effect on January 1, 2024, and employees may begin using accrued leave after 90 days (Illinois Department of Labor).
Then comes the part that catches firms in the city. The state Act does not apply to workers and employers in the City of Chicago or in Cook County, because both passed their own paid leave ordinances before it took effect (Illinois Department of Labor). A Loop practice follows the city ordinance. A practice elsewhere in Cook County is generally under the county ordinance instead. A firm outside Cook County answers to the state Act, and so does a firm inside Cook County that the county ordinance does not actually reach, because the Act expressly picks up any employer a local ordinance leaves without paid leave (820 ILCS 192/15(p), quoted in full by the Illinois Department of Labor). Check which ordinance your office address sits under before you build the row, not which county it is in.
The city ordinance is the more expensive of the two, and it is expensive in a specific way. A covered employee, meaning one who works at least 80 hours for an employer within any 120-day period while physically present in Chicago, accrues one hour of paid leave and one hour of paid sick leave for every 35 hours worked, up to 40 hours of each in a 12-month period (Chicago Office of Labor Standards). That is two banks, accruing faster than the state rate, on the same hour of work.
Busy season accelerates that accrual for one half of your roster and not the other. Employees eligible for overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act have their overtime hours counted for accrual purposes, so a March week past 40 hours adds to both banks for every seat that does not clear the exemption tests (Chicago Office of Labor Standards). For employees exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, paid leave and paid sick leave accrue on a 40-hour work week rather than on hours actually worked, so the same week adds capacity without adding accrual (Chicago Office of Labor Standards). Which side of that line a seat sits on is decided by the Fair Labor Standards Act exemption test, which asks first what a seat is paid and then what it actually does. Both parts are walked through, seat by seat, in in-house vs outsourced accounting.
Two more rows sit at the end of the relationship rather than the start. Employers with 51 or more covered employees must pay out accrued and unused paid leave when employment ends, employers with 50 or fewer do not, and the ordinance never requires more than seven days, or 56 hours, to be paid at separation (Chicago Office of Labor Standards). Unless the employer frontloads the hours, unused paid leave carries over up to 16 hours into the next year (Chicago Office of Labor Standards). Unused paid sick leave carries over up to 80 hours either way, frontloaded or accrued (Chicago Office of Labor Standards).
The wage floor moves on a fixed calendar too. As of July 1, 2026, the Chicago minimum wage is $17.05 an hour for employers with 4 or more employees, and it rises every July 1 by the Consumer Price Index or 2.5%, whichever is lower (City of Chicago). That rarely binds a preparer. Where it binds is the seasonal scanning, intake and front-desk hours some firms add from February to April, and it reprices them partway through extension season.
None of this is an argument for moving work. It is an argument for putting the right number on the in-house side before anything gets compared, because accrual under the city ordinance attaches to hours worked physically in Chicago, and hours worked outside Chicago do not count toward it (Chicago Office of Labor Standards). A firm that leaves these rows out is not comparing a Chicago seat to a provider quote. It is comparing a national average to a provider quote and calling the difference local.
What an Outside Provider Can Be Called in Illinois
Illinois separates the credential from the license, and the distinction decides your wording rather than your workflow.
The state runs a two-tier system. The Illinois Board of Examiners certifies that a candidate has completed the education and examination requirements, and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation issues the license. With that license a person may hold themselves out to the public as a CPA. Without it, someone who has passed the exam may only describe themselves as having successfully completed the CPA exam (Illinois Board of Examiners).
The same logic runs at firm level. IDFPR states that a CPA firm cannot advertise or offer any professional services in Illinois without a valid CPA firm license (IDFPR). To hold one, a majority of the ownership in financial interests and voting rights must belong to persons currently licensed in some state, and any owner whose principal place of business is in Illinois and who practices public accounting here must hold a valid Illinois license, as defined in Section 8 of the Illinois Public Accounting Act (IDFPR). Even a sole proprietorship needs the firm license once others take part in the conduct of the business, which is what names like "and Company" or "and Associates" signal (IDFPR).
Read that against how outsourced work gets described. Unless your provider holds an Illinois CPA firm license in its own name, it is not an Illinois licensed CPA firm and cannot be presented to a client as one, on a proposal, on a website, or in the letterhead of a deliverable. Ask for the firm license number, check it on IDFPR's license lookup, and if there is not one, write the provider out of everything a client sees. The engagement letter is your firm's, the work goes out under your firm's license, and your partner signs. Which of the provider models sits behind that arrangement, and how a dedicated team differs from a white-label one, is set out in the guide to outsourced bookkeeping companies for CPA firms, along with the client-consent question under federal tax law.
State privacy law sits above the federal ground you already know. Under the Illinois Personal Information Protection Act, any entity that conducts business in Illinois and handles, collects, disseminates or otherwise deals with nonpublic personal information must disclose a data security breach of personal information concerning Illinois residents in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay (Illinois Attorney General). The Act's express duties to notify the Attorney General itself run to State agencies and to entities covered by the federal health privacy rules, which is a narrower set than the firms the disclosure duty reaches (Illinois Attorney General).
Your firm is the entity conducting business in Illinois, so moving a file to a provider does not move the disclosure duty off you. Put the provider's obligation to tell you, fast enough for you to meet your own clock, in the contract rather than in the onboarding call. The federal safeguards program and the vendor security review that sit underneath it are covered in cybersecurity for CPA firms and in the safety assessment for outsourced accounting.
The Illinois Licensure Change Landing in 2027
The pipeline argument has a local version, and it changes who qualifies rather than how many people exist.
House Bill 2459 passed in August 2025 and amends the Illinois Public Accounting Act to create two additional pathways to CPA licensure, scheduled to be implemented starting in 2027. One is a bachelor's degree with a concentration in accounting, at least two years of relevant work experience, and passage of the CPA exam. The other is a master's degree with the required concentration in accounting, at least one year of relevant work experience, and passage of the exam (Illinois Board of Examiners, Annual Report of Activity Fiscal Year 2025).
The old route survives alongside them. The legacy pathway still asks for 150 credit hours of qualifying education, one year of relevant work experience, and all portions of the CPA exam (Illinois Board of Examiners, Annual Report of Activity Fiscal Year 2025).
The bachelor's route asks a candidate for two years of relevant experience where the master's route asks for one, and neither year has to be earned in a practice. Illinois counts experience providing accounting, attest, management advisory, financial advisory, tax or consulting services gained through employment in government, industry, academia or public practice, verified on a form signed by the candidate's designated supervisor or an authorized agent of the employer (IDFPR). What changes for a Chicago firm is the length of the commitment when a bachelor's-route candidate does earn that experience with you, and the supervision and verification duty falls on the same partners already short on review time. What the national pipeline is doing, and why rising enrollment does not fill a seat this season, is read off the licensure data in the accountant shortage breakdown.
Deciding on Outsourced Accounting Services in Chicago
Four things are genuinely local to a Chicago firm, and only four. The metro wage premium for accounting work is smaller than the general one. The city ordinance grants two leave banks on a faster accrual than the state Act, and adds a payout obligation once you pass 50 covered employees. Illinois decides what an outside provider may be called on anything a client sees. And the licensure route into your own hiring pool changes in 2027.
Everything else is the same question a firm in any state is answering: what outsourcing and offshoring each mean, which model fits the work, the client consent, the vetting, the handover. Where to start does not change at the city limit.
So the local work is short and specific. Build the in-house side with the Chicago rows in it, get the provider's wording checked against the Illinois license line before anything reaches a client, and put the breach clock in the contract. Then the comparison is finally between two real numbers.
Accountably places trained offshore accountants and tax preparers inside US CPA and EA firms, ramped on your software and SOPs in about 3 to 4 weeks. Since 2022 that has meant 30+ placements across 20+ US firms, and the signature, the opinion and the final judgment stay with your firm. The entry point is a Free 40-Hour Proof Pilot on a fixed block of your own representative work, put through multi-layer review, so your reviewer grades real output before your name is on the line. Don't trust us. Test us.