Data Science & Analytics Salaries are on the Rise
In our 2021 Data Science & Analytics Salary Report, we predicted that salaries would be increasing for professionals with in-demand data science and analytics skills based on trends we saw in our data along with our own observations of the active hiring market.In the time since the study was published, the hiring market for data scientists has only accelerated. Our analysis of salary growth for professionals who changed jobs in 2021 showed significant salary growth for those that made a move. Next we wanted to understand what’s happened to analytics salaries in the aggregate six months after last year’s salary studyWe found there was a significant increase in median salaries for individual contributors with at least six years of relevant experience with experience in AI applications. For analytics professionals, median base salaries increased by over 14%, and for data scientists at the same level, the increase was 9.4%. In our 2021 salary report, individual contributors at this level saw either a slight dip or no change from 2020 salaries. The results here show a major shift since then.
This lines up with what we are seeing in the market: experienced individual contributors are a hot commodity. While data science and analytics are in-demand across all levels, there is now a greater supply of professionals at the entry level since the number of data-focused masters programs has increased in recent years along with greater interest in quantitative careers among higher education students taking some of the pressure off salaries. Experienced talent is more finite and, therefore, is pulling in a premium on salaries in this competitive, candidate-driven market.Among managers, the greatest increases were among level 1 managers: those leading small, project-based teams, rather than whole data and analytics functions and strategy.
We anticipate that we will continue to see change as we evaluate the full year of data for our upcoming 2022 salary report to be published this summer. If we’ve learned anything in our years immersed in the data science market, it’s that everything can change in the blink of an eye. 2022 is just getting started, and the hiring market remains strong, so these upward salary trends are predicted to continue.