Carpenter
Location
Chicago, IL
Wage
$26 – $32.5/hr
Employment Type
Full-time
Posted on September 28, 2026
Location
Chicago, IL
Wage
$26 – $32.5/hr
Employment Type
Full-time
Posted on September 28, 2026
The Art Institute of Chicago is seeking a Carpenter to construct, install, repair, and renovate structures and fixtures made of wood and other materials throughout the museum. The Carpenter will work within the Department of Facilities and Logistics, which is responsible for the maintenance of museum facilities and non-art related operations.
At roughly $29/hr, this posting comes in about 25% below the $39/hr median for welding jobs in Chicago, IL, where the middle half runs $34–$50/hr across 76 postings with published pay. Put another way, it pays more than about 18% of the comparable postings we have wage data for. That gap is worth raising directly — in a market this size there is normally room to negotiate toward the median, particularly if you already hold the certifications the posting asks for.
We're tracking 99 other active welding openings in Chicago, IL right now, from 54 different employers. 35 of them were added in the last week. Across Illinois as a whole we're tracking 354 other active welding openings from 213 employers. A metro this active generally means you have real leverage — employers here are competing for the same welders. Browse every welding job in Chicago, or widen the search to Illinois.
The most active employers in Illinois at the moment, by number of open welding reqs, are Staff on Site (13), Gerber Collision & Glass (12), and S&C Electric Company (9). Volume like that usually means either a genuine expansion or a staffing agency working several client sites — worth knowing which before you apply.
Within Illinois, the best-paying metros we track by median hourly rate are Chicago at $39/hr, Itasca at $36/hr, and Addison at $35/hr. Chicago is among them.
Pay figures are medians computed from live postings in the Welding Pros index, not from survey data, and they move as employers post. Carpenter figures were last recalculated when this page was built.