How Much do Analytics Salaries Increase when Changing Jobs?
Are you sick and tired of hearing about your friend’s sister’s husband’s brother’s friend that got a new analytics job and won’t stop talking about how they got a 60% salary increase? Does that seem unrealistic to you, but you don’t have any hard data handy to point out that they just might be exaggerating?Well you can rest easy, because we figured it was time to update our data on analytics pay increases, and wanted to share the results. We examined a sample of our analytics network that changed jobs and received a salary increase. When starting with a new organization, an analytics professional realizes a median base salary increase of 13.3%, very similar to what we found in our prior salary studies. Roughly 45% of analytics professionals received base salary increases between 6% and 15%.
As one might expect, the percentage increases are higher for more junior professionals, since a base increase accounts for a greater percentage of their overall salary. As analytics professionals advance in their career, their salary increases when changing jobs will be smaller as a percentage of their base salary.
So, while analytics professionals might not be getting 60% salary increases like that friend of a friend touted (sorry to burst any bubbles there!), these increases are still in stark contrast to the 2-4% one might expect as an annual merit increase for staying at their job for another year.
So, how do companies keep analytics pros in their seats?
I’ve been hearing about companies giving out retention bonuses if they know their people are being poached away. While that’s certainly not a bad idea, compensation isn’t the only motivating factor that analytics professionals look for when evaluating opportunities. It’s been much-quoted that quantitative folks are motivated by “intellectual curiosity”, and even we found that growth opportunities and challenging work are key factors.My best advice when trying to retain your team is to make sure that analytics has top level buy-in, empower the department with the latest tools, and let them tackle the complex problems that they crave, in addition to offering competitive salaries. Some attrition is to be expected though, as evidenced by the fact that 20.1% of analytics professionals changed jobs last year, with an average tenure of only 2.6 years.
Want more salary information?
If you’re interested in learning more about what exactly a “competitive salary” is for an analytics professional or what bonus eligibility and payouts are most common at your job level, download our latest Burtch Works Study: Salaries for Analytics Professionals, which examines how salaries vary by career level, region, industry, residency status, and more. If you’re just interested in the highlights, we published an executive summary of the results here.So now I’m curious, if you’re a hiring manager, what’s been your biggest challenge in recruiting and retaining your people? If you’re an analytics professional, what’s the most likely factor to motivate you to change jobs? Let me know in the comments!
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