Illinois prevailing wage · all 102 counties · every day

The rate changed on the 15th.
Your payroll ran on the 20th.
Nobody told you.

The Illinois Department of Labor revises county wage schedules on no fixed calendar and notifies no one. RateWatch reads every county schedule every day and emails you only when yours changes, with the old rate, the new rate, the fringe breakdown and the date it took effect. Before the certified payroll goes out wrong.

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Checking daily since September 2026 · built 2026-09-06

102

county schedules watched

schedule versions per county since Jan 2025

+$2.25

last Cook change: Sprinkler Fitter, Aug 15

Why this exists

How a careful payroll clerk still gets burned

Every line below happened in Cook County in 2026. The dates are IDOL's.

July 15

IDOL posts a new Cook schedule

73 classifications move. Laborer base goes from $51.40 to $53.00. Electrician from $57.75 to $63.15. No email, no notice. The change appears on a state web page.

July 20

Payroll runs at last month's rates

The clerk checked the site in June, like the contract told them to. Nothing had changed then. The certified payroll goes into LCPtracker at $51.40.

August

The monitor finds it

Back wages for every hour since the 15th, a statutory penalty on top, and a certified payroll that has to be restated and resubmitted. Two violations in five years and a contractor can be barred from public work.

Your exposure from one missed change

Workers on public jobs12

Hours per worker per week40

Size of the rate move ($/hour)$1.60

Weeks before anyone notices4

Defaults are Cook County's July 2026 Laborer move ($1.60) for a twelve-person crew, caught a month later. Package changes (fringes) usually add more.

Back wages owed

$3,072

12 workers × 40 h × $1.60 × 4 weeks, before the statutory penalty and the cost of restating four certified payrolls.

RateWatch for that crew: $19 a month. The alert arrives the day the schedule is posted, with the new rate sheet attached. Illinois adds a penalty on top of back wages under the Prevailing Wage Act; the exact figure depends on the finding.

Real history, county by county

Six releases in 2026. Three of them did not touch Cook.

IDOL posts a release whenever any county changes, but a release does not mean your county changed. Counties that stayed the same keep their previous schedule. The only way to know is to open your county's file after every release and compare it line by line to the last one. Every bar below is a schedule version RateWatch read and compared. Click one.

The alert, as it arrives

Old rate, new rate, package, effective date. That is the whole email.

FromRateWatchSubjectCook County: 73 prevailing wage changes posted 7/15/2026, effective July 15, 2026

Trade	Type	Base	Total package
ELECTRICIANWATCHED	ALL	57.75 → 63.15 +5.40	101.99 → 107.71
LABORERWATCHED	ALL	51.40 → 53.00 +1.60	88.34 → 92.11
CARPENTER	ALL	56.71 → 58.51 +1.80	101.26 → 105.33
CEMENT MASON	ALL	53.10 → 57.10 +4.00	96.78 → 100.85
OPERATING ENGINEER	BLD · class 1	64.80 → 68.80 +4.00	115.80 → 121.85
PLUMBER	BLD	60.50 → 62.00 +1.50	99.52 → 103.02

…and 67 more rows. Your trades are marked and sorted first. Every email links the IDOL schedule it was read from. Paid plans attach the full county rate sheet as CSV and an audited Excel workbook.

One month later

Cook County: 1 prevailing wage change posted 8/14/2026, effective August 15, 2026

SPRINKLER FITTER (BLD): base 63.20 → 65.45 (+2.25); fringes 36.55 → 38.60; package 104.05

The one-line revision nobody catches by re-checking a website. Also the one that bounces a certified payroll.

And when nothing changes

RateWatch: no changes in Cook this month

If you got no alert, a short monthly note confirms the watcher ran every day and your schedule is unchanged. Silence you can trust.

When the state prints a note

Clark County, July 15: "the Oil and Chip Truck Driver classification has been eliminated in this county"

IDOL sometimes prints a sentence inside the table. RateWatch surfaces it on its own line instead of losing it. Nothing is guessed, ever.

How it works

Check. Compare. Tell you once.

Every county, every day

RateWatch reads IDOL's release index each morning and fetches any county schedule that is new since yesterday. Public state data, read politely and cached.

Compared line by line

Base, foreman, the four overtime multipliers and every fringe component are compared with the previous schedule for every classification. Anything the reader cannot place with confidence is listed for review, never guessed.

One email, only when it matters

Old and new rates, the effective date and a link to the IDOL file. Paid plans get the county rate sheet as CSV, an audited Excel workbook and a changes-only file ready for payroll.

What you get	Re-checking the IDOL site yourself	Certified payroll software	RateWatch
Told the day a county schedule changes	Only if you happened to look	Most vendors tell you to check IDOL yourself	Yes, every county
Old rate next to new rate, per classification	Two PDFs side by side, by hand	Current rate only	Yes, with fringes and package
Know when nothing changed	You only know you looked	—	Monthly confirmation
Rate sheet ready to import	Retype it	In their format	CSV, Excel, changes-only
Cost	An hour of a clerk's time per county per month, if it happens	$49 to $400 per month plus setup	Free for one county, $19/month for five

Pricing

Less than an hour of payroll time. Far less than one rejected payroll.

Free

forever

One county
Change alerts by email
Monthly "no changes" confirmation

Start free

Most payroll clerks

Payroll

$19/month

billed monthly

Up to five counties
Your trades marked and sorted first
Rate sheet as CSV + audited Excel workbook
Changes-only file for every alert
Old and new value for every fringe component

Multi-county

$49/month

billed monthly

All 102 Illinois counties
Up to five recipients per company
Everything in Payroll
Import template built from your own payroll export
Priority reply from a person who does this for a living

Bookkeeper

$99/month

billed monthly

Up to ten client companies
Each client's counties and trades
One digest to you, alerts to each client if you want
Everything in Multi-county

Cancel any time from the link in any email. RateWatch is a notification aid built on public IDOL data; the Illinois Department of Labor is the sole authority for prevailing wage rates.

Questions

The ones payroll clerks ask first

Where do the rates come from?

From the county schedule PDFs the Illinois Department of Labor publishes on labor.illinois.gov. Every email links to the exact file it was read from. RateWatch never edits, rounds or estimates a rate.

Is this legal or payroll advice?

No. It is a change notification. Confirm every rate against the IDOL schedule before you run payroll, and talk to your own compliance or legal adviser about how the Prevailing Wage Act applies to your project.

What if the state changes how it publishes?

If a schedule cannot be read with confidence, the affected lines are listed for review instead of being reported as numbers, and the operator is told the same day. You never receive a guessed rate.

Which trades and columns are covered?

Every classification in the county schedule: base, foreman, the four overtime multipliers, health and welfare, pension, vacation, training, other insurance and the overtime-owed columns. The free plan covers all of them for one county.

Does it work for federal (Davis-Bacon) jobs?

RateWatch covers the Illinois Prevailing Wage Act schedules today. Federal wage determinations are on the roadmap; if you need them, say so at signup and you will hear first.

How do I stop?

Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link and a List-Unsubscribe header your mail client understands. Paid plans cancel from the same link. No calls, no forms.

Who runs this?

A construction labor-compliance specialist in the Chicago area who has spent years on the monitoring side watching good subcontractors get certified payrolls rejected over a rate that changed mid-month, and built the tool he wished they had.

Start today

Pick your county. You will hear from us the day it changes.

Free for one county, no card, no setup. If your county's schedule changes tomorrow, you will know tomorrow.

Watch my county free

The rate changed on the 15th.Your payroll ran on the 20th.Nobody told you.

Watch one county free

How a careful payroll clerk still gets burned

IDOL posts a new Cook schedule

Payroll runs at last month's rates

The monitor finds it

Six releases in 2026. Three of them did not touch Cook.

Old rate, new rate, package, effective date. That is the whole email.

Check. Compare. Tell you once.

Every county, every day

Compared line by line

One email, only when it matters

Less than an hour of payroll time. Far less than one rejected payroll.

The ones payroll clerks ask first

Pick your county. You will hear from us the day it changes.

The rate changed on the 15th.
Your payroll ran on the 20th.
Nobody told you.