by Brooke Johnson Mar 5, 2025, 7:00am CDT
If you’re an Illinois employee who started working after Jan. 1, 2011, you’re contributing a lot toward your pension. But you’ll get very little in return.
When I was offered a tenure-track position in 2011 in Illinois, I felt lucky. Tenure-track positions are hard to get. It was a pay cut from my work in California, but it meant stability and security in the state’s pension system — or so I thought.
I focused on my research, won several teaching awards and mentored first-generation students like myself. I started saving for retirement and learned about Tier 2 pensions and why they must be fixed.
Illinois’ public pension system has two “tracks” — Tier 1 and Tier 2. Employees hired on or after Jan. 1, 2011 are in Tier 2. Like my colleagues in Tier 1, Tier 2 members pay 8% of their income into their pensions. That is where the similarities end.