Living in Chicago

Chicago, United States, about 2,664,452 people. What you would earn and keep, the climate month by month, and every open figure we hold, each with its source, period and licence.

Weigh Chicago against other cities, with your own numbers

Key facts

• Chicago has about 2,664,452 residents (GeoNames).
• On a gross salary of US$67,000 a year, an employee in Chicago takes home about US$52,793 a year (US$4,399 a month) after income tax and employee contributions, an effective rate of 21.2% (United States 2026 rules). Illinois: no local income tax; no property tax or education credits.
• A one-bedroom home in Chicago rents for about US$1,565 a month (city figure; American Community Survey 1-year estimates, US Census Bureau, 2025).
• In Chicago the average daily high (air temperature in the shade) peaks at 27.1 °C in July and the average daily low falls to −7.0 °C in January (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Chicago has about 53 nice days a year, days that are dry, mostly clear and feel 18 to 30 °C on average from 8 am to 8 pm, most of them in August (13) (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Between 2021 and 2025 the air in Chicago reached 37.4 °C at its hottest and −24.9 °C at its coldest (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo).
• It rains or snows (at least 1 mm) on about 120 days a year in Chicago (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• The shortest day in Chicago lasts 9 h 08 min and the longest 15 h 13 min (computed from latitude).
• Fine dust (PM2.5) in Chicago averages 8.7 µg/m³ a year, 1.7 times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³ (WHO Ambient Air Quality Database v8.0 (2026), World Health Organization, 2022).
• Everyday prices in the United States sit at 100.0 on an index where the United States is 100 (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2025).
• Life expectancy at birth in the United States is 78.9 years (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2024).
• The United States records 5.76 intentional homicides per 100,000 people a year (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2023).
• Only citizens of the United States can live and work in Chicago without a visa or permit; everyone else needs one.

What you would take home

Wages only: federal income tax with the standard deduction (single, or married filing jointly), the Child Tax Credit, Social Security and Medicare, plus state tax where a state module exists and New York City tax. Rules for 2026. Sources: IRS: tax year 2026 inflation adjustments (Rev. Proc. 2025-32), SSA: contribution and benefit base, IDOR: IL-700-T 2026 withholding tables (4.95%, $2,925 exemption), IDOR: FY 2026-15, what's new (exemption limit above $250,000 AGI).

• City income taxes only for New York City (and Denver's head tax); no itemised deductions. A 401(k) contribution is set as your pension share.
• The Child Tax Credit counts children under 17 and phases out above $200,000 of income ($400,000 on a joint return); for an unmarried couple one parent claims it. Dependent care credits are not modelled.
• A flat-rate setting replaces the federal schedule only; the taxable share applies to state and city tax too.
• Illinois: no local income tax; no property tax or education credits.

A month in Chicago

Assumed: one person, €60,000 gross a year, renting a one-bedroom home, and everyday spending of €1,200 a month in Lisbon scaled by each country's price level. These are the app's defaults; change any of them there.

Who can live and work here freely

• Citizens of the United States.
• Everyone else needs a visa or permit.

Climate

Daylight is computed from latitude: the shortest day lasts 9 h 08 min, the longest 15 h 13 min.

Every figure

No open figure yet for: your childcare cost, health insurance premium, life satisfaction, public swimming pools (official), green urban areas (official), monthly transit pass, road deaths, politics, left to right. A country-wide figure is marked as such where it stands in for the city.

Compare Chicago with

• Chicago vs Austin
• Chicago vs Boston
• Chicago vs Denver
• Chicago vs Los Angeles
• Chicago vs Miami
• Chicago vs Montreal
• Chicago vs New York
• Chicago vs San Francisco
• Chicago vs Seattle
• Chicago vs Toronto
• Chicago vs Vancouver

Elsewhere

Sources we link to but do not copy, because their licences forbid it.

• Numbeo: cost of living in Chicago
• WeatherSpark: year-round weather in Chicago
• Wikipedia: Chicago

Credits

• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 1-year estimates (Public domain (US government work))
• Unicode CLDR territory information. Copyright © 1991-2026 Unicode, Inc. Used under the Unicode License v3 (https://www.unicode.org/license.txt) (Unicode License v3)
• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Founders Running Club communities list (facts of presence and links only) (No licence from the publisher: only facts of presence are stored)
• Places, coordinates, populations and time zones from GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
• GHS-UCDB R2024A, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, CC BY 4.0, doi:10.2905/1a338be6-7eaf-480c-9664-3a8ade88cbcd; Borgo derives the distance from the centre to the urban centre's edge Shores and lakes from Natural Earth (public domain) decide which directions lead on to land. (CC BY 4.0)
• Counts of GitHub profiles by stated location, from GitHub's public user search (counts only, no profile data) (No data licence from the publisher: only total counts are stored, no record about anyone, as its terms allow public, non-personal information in openly published research)
• Borgo contributors, from the labour codes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Source: Meteostat (meteostat.net) and its data providers (dev.meteostat.net/providers), CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
• The M-Lab NDT Data Set, 2023-01-01–2023-12-31. https://measurementlab.net/tests/ndt (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Public holidays from Nager.Date (date.nager.at), MIT License, Copyright (c) Nager (MIT License)
• Made with Natural Earth (public domain) (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• OECD (2026), Net childcare costs, OECD Tax-Benefit Models, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/net-childcare-costs.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• OECD (2026), OECD Family Database, PF2.1 Parental leave systems, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/oecd-family-database.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), CC BY 4.0 Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2021-2025. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains. (CC BY 4.0)
• OpenAlex (openalex.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• Airports from OurAirports (ourairports.com), public domain (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• Research Organization Registry (ror.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Terrain Tiles on AWS Open Data (Mapzen, a Linux Foundation project): SRTM and GMTED2010 terrain data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey; ETOPO1, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Canada terrain data contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada (Terrain Tiles source terms: public domain (USGS, NOAA) and Open Government Licence – Canada, with attribution)
• World Health Organization, WHO Ambient Air Quality Database (Version 8.0), 2026, accessed 2026-10-27; data provided by the national and regional agencies named in each value's note WHO does not endorse Borgo, its use of these data, or any city ranking built from them. Values are as published by WHO; WHO advises against using the database to rank cities or compare countries directly, because monitoring differs between places. (WHO terms and conditions for data compilations)
• World Bank, World Development Indicators, CC BY 4.0 (underlying sources named in each figure's note: ICP, IMF, UNODC, UN Population Division, WHO, ILO, UNESCO Institute for Statistics) (CC BY 4.0)
• World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators, Control of Corruption estimate, CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)

Cite this page

Borgo, “Living in Chicago”, https://borgo.abcastor.com/city/chicago-us/, figures as of 2026-11-05. Please also name the original source of any figure you use; each is listed above with its licence. Data: chicago-us.json.