Data Scientists Are Still the Talk of the Town
Richard Johnson
Richard Johnson, Author at Glassdoor US | May 16, 2023
Key Takeaways
- Job seeker interest for data scientist roles outside of tech has risen, with the share of job clicks in tech for data scientist roles declining 10 percentage points from 37 percent in 2019 to 27 percent in 2023, as of March 31.
- The highest paying industries for data scientists are tech ($120,391), pharmaceutical & biotechnology ($114,896) and aerospace & defense ($107,223).
- Within data science, machine learning engineers are still heavily concentrated in industries such as aerospace & defense (12 percent of data scientists), tech (8 percent) and manufacturing (5 percent) despite recent developments in artificial intelligence.
Data scientist jobs have been a red hot target for many job seekers due in part to the earning potential, job satisfaction and widespread job availability. As companies continue to pile on volumes of data to analyze and make strategic decisions, data scientists will be presented with new opportunities in different fields. This research examines the changes in job seeker interest for data scientist roles, the representation across industry for data scientist subgroups, as well as in which industries and metros data scientists stand to earn the highest salary in the U.S.
Data Scientists Seek Out Non-Tech Roles
Data scientists play a key role in bringing to life insights presented by big data, and Glassdoor job listings show that the sector with the highest share of data scientists is in tech. However, data science skills are transferable between industries, and demand for data-driven decision making is creating more opportunities for data scientists outside of tech. On Glassdoor, we find that 27 percent of job seeker interest in data science jobs was in tech in 2023, down 10 percentage points from 37 percent in 2019, showing data scientists are increasingly expanding their palate beyond the tech sector.
Sectors With the Highest Share of Job Clicks for Data Scientist Roles
| Rank | Sector | 2019 | 2023 |
| 1 | Information Technology | 37% | 27% |
| 2 | Healthcare | 6% | 9% |
| 3 | Financial Services | 9% | 9% |
| 4 | Management & Consulting | 8% | 7% |
| 5 | Manufacturing | 5% | 6% |
| 6 | Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology | 3% | 5% |
| 7 | Human Resource & Staffing | 6% | 5% |
| 8 | Insurance | 4% | 5% |
| 9 | Retail & Wholesale | 3% | 4% |
| 10 | Media & Communication | 6% | 4% |
Source: Glassdoor job-clicks on “data scientist” job listings for 2019 and 2023, as of March 31
Aside from tech, healthcare’s share of data scientists’ interest saw a jump from 6 to 9 percent since 2019, signaling a growing interest among job seekers in an industry with significant amounts of patient data.
Although a small share of job clicks overall, data scientist jobs in the pharmaceutical & biotechnology sector increased from 3 to 5 percent from 2019 to 2023, with companies over the pandemic, such as Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, attracting data scientists with machine learning skills to help them better understand the relationship between treatments and their effectiveness in treating diseases. Other sectors such as financial services and management & consulting remained relatively stable for job seekers since 2019. Overall, changes in job seeker interest for data scientist roles outside of tech have been in progress over the last four years, recent layoffs notwithstanding, and signals the growing interest among job seekers to apply their skills in different fields.
Tech Still Outpaces Other Industries for Data Scientist Salaries
Although data scientists are increasingly interested in industries outside of tech, data science jobs in tech still dominate other industries. Analyzing reported salaries on Glassdoor across different industries from full-time U.S. data scientists from January 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023, we find that data scientist jobs pay well above the national average.
Average Data Scientist Salary By Sector
| Rank | Sector | 25th Percentile | Avg. Salary | 75th Percentile |
| 1 | Information Technology | $85,000 | $120,391 | $150,000 |
| 2 | Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology | $85,000 | $114,896 | $140,000 |
| 3 | Aerospace & Defense | $80,000 | $107,223 | $129,250 |
| 4 | Financial Services | $80,000 | $106,092 | $129,000 |
| 5 | Telecommunications | $80,000 | $102,218 | $125,000 |
| 6 | Media & Communication | $72,000 | $102,080 | $125,000 |
| 7 | Retail & Wholesale | $70,000 | $101,296 | $125,000 |
| 8 | Real Estate | $72,000 | $101,199 | $120,000 |
| 9 | Management & Consulting | $75,000 | $100,240 | $121,000 |
| 10 | Insurance | $75,000 | $98,961 | $120,000 |
| 11 | Manufacturing | $74,000 | $98,584 | $120,000 |
| 12 | Energy, Mining & Utilities | $72,000 | $96,136 | $120,000 |
| 13 | Healthcare | $70,000 | $94,966 | $115,000 |
| 14 | Transportation & Logistics | $69,300 | $93,858 | $115,000 |
| 15 | Arts, Entertainment & Recreation | $65,000 | $92,523 | $115,750 |
| 16 | Leisure & Hospitality | $60,500 | $89,233 | $114,000 |
| 17 | Government & Public Administration | $62,250 | $88,043 | $105,000 |
| 18 | Human Resources & Staffing | $60,000 | $87,533 | $110,000 |
| 19 | Construction, Repair & Maintenance Services | $59,500 | $81,242 | $95,000 |
| 20 | Education | $56,000 | $76,219 | $90,000 |
| 21 | Nonprofit & NGO | $57,000 | $75,997 | $90,000 |
Source: Reported salaries on Glassdoor from U.S. full-time data scientists for jobs held from January 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023
Tech ($120,391), pharmaceutical & biotechnology ($114,896) and aerospace & defense ($107,223) were the top three highest paying industries for data scientists. Entry-level data scientists in tech and pharmaceutical & biotechnology bringing in a salary at the 25th percentile (or $85,000) for example can expect to make 12 percent more than the average data scientist working in the nonprofit & NGO sector.
Tech, pharmaceutical & biotechnology and aerospace & defense have long been ahead of other industries in their requirements for job seekers to have more technical skills, which in turn demands higher pay. For example, higher-paid machine learning engineers make up 12 percent of data scientists in aerospace & defense compared to the national average of 4 percent, as will be shown in the next section.
Tip for Job Seekers
Job seekers interested in becoming data scientists can expect to earn a greater salary in higher-paying sectors such as tech, financial services and management & consulting, where the variation in salary is much greater and opportunities to advance into different types of data scientist roles, such as data engineer or machine learning engineer, are more common compared to lower-paying sectors like education, government and nonprofits which don’t hire as many of these specialized roles.
Data Scientists Come in Different Shapes and Sizes
“Data scientist” is a broad umbrella job title which includes different specializations with skills ranging from analytics to data engineering to machine learning. We break out the data scientist role into more specialized subgroups to examine the different occupational shares across sectors and find that 56 percent of data scientist roles on average fall into the data analyst and business intelligence category, 25 percent in the data scientist group, 14 percent for data engineer roles and 4 percent for machine learning engineer jobs. Data analytics and business intelligence are an increasingly important function in every industry as data collection becomes easier and businesses rely on data to inform decision making.
Share of Data Scientists by Occupational Subgroup and Sector
| Sector | Data Scientist | Data Analyst/BI | ML Engineer | Data Engineer |
| Aerospace & Defense | 40% | 40% | 12% | 7% |
| Arts, Entertainment & Recreation | 16% | 65% | 2% | 16% |
| Construction, Repair & Maintenance Services | 11% | 77% | 2% | 10% |
| Education | 18% | 74% | 4% | 4% |
| Energy, Mining & Utilities | 27% | 56% | 3% | 14% |
| Financial Services | 23% | 60% | 3% | 14% |
| Government & Public Administration | 22% | 71% | 4% | 4% |
| Healthcare | 16% | 72% | 1% | 11% |
| Human Resources & Staffing | 14% | 70% | 1% | 16% |
| Information Technology | 31% | 41% | 8% | 20% |
| Insurance | 21% | 60% | 1% | 19% |
| Leisure & Hospitality | 31% | 47% | 3% | 18% |
| Management & Consulting | 30% | 51% | 2% | 17% |
| Manufacturing | 23% | 60% | 5% | 13% |
| Media & Communication | 18% | 67% | 2% | 14% |
| Nonprofit & NGO | 14% | 77% | 1% | 7% |
| Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology | 32% | 56% | 4% | 8% |
| Real Estate | 19% | 66% | 2% | 12% |
| Retail & Wholesale | 24% | 61% | 3% | 12% |
| Telecommunications | 22% | 64% | 1% | 13% |
| Transportation & Logistics | 21% | 67% | 1% | 11% |
| Average | 25% | 56% | 4% | 14% |
Source: Reported salaries on Glassdoor from U.S. full-time data scientists for jobs held from January 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023
Nonprofit & NGO (77 percent), construction, repair & maintenance services (77 percent) and education (74 percent) show the highest share of data scientists specializing in data analytics and business intelligence. In these industries, data science is still a nascent field, starting with data collection and analytics, and has not matured to the point of requiring workers to have more specialized expertise in subfields like machine learning or data engineering.
Sectors such as tech, aerospace & defense and management & consulting have more demand for workers with specialized and technical experience working with data. Despite recent developments in AI, machine learning engineers, whose responsibilities include designing and constructing AI systems, are still heavily concentrated in industries such as aerospace & defense (12 percent), tech (8 percent) and manufacturing (5 percent).
Overall, data scientists come in different shapes and sizes, and it is clear that every sector is incorporating data analytics to inform business practices, but as data science practices become increasingly common, we should also expect to see more demand for data scientists, data engineers and ML engineers spread to other industries.
Large Metros Offer Top Dollar for Data Scientists
Large metro tech hubs such as San Jose, San Francisco and Seattle are known for their high paying salaries for tech workers, particularly data scientists. Below we show the salary ranges for data scientists by U.S. metro.
Average Data Scientist Salary By Metro
| Rank | Metro | 25th Percentile | Avg. Salary | 75th Percentile |
| 1 | San Jose, CA | $115,000 | $145,563 | $170,125 |
| 2 | San Francisco, CA | $110,000 | $142,349 | $170,000 |
| 3 | Seattle, WA | $100,000 | $128,818 | $155,000 |
| 4 | New York City, NY | $80,000 | $112,627 | $140,000 |
| 5 | Boston, MA | $80,000 | $111,259 | $135,500 |
| 6 | Los Angeles, CA | $78,000 | $110,027 | $135,000 |
| 7 | Hartford, CT | $85,000 | $109,249 | $129,000 |
| 8 | Boulder, CO | $75,000 | $109,123 | $145,000 |
| 9 | Washington, DC | $80,000 | $108,732 | $130,000 |
| 10 | Austin, TX | $77,263 | $106,196 | $130,000 |
| 11 | San Diego, CA | $75,000 | $105,424 | $130,428 |
| 12 | Colorado Springs, CO | $72,250 | $104,912 | $126,250 |
| 13 | Charlotte, NC | $75,000 | $104,810 | $127,563 |
| 14 | Portland, OR | $76,500 | $104,253 | $130,000 |
| 15 | Chicago, IL | $78,000 | $103,089 | $125,000 |
| 16 | Bridgeport, CT | $80,000 | $102,688 | $120,000 |
| 17 | Denver, CO | $76,000 | $101,900 | $120,000 |
| 18 | Richmond, VA | $72,000 | $101,133 | $120,000 |
| 19 | Raleigh-Durham, NC | $77,000 | $100,665 | $125,000 |
| 20 | Cincinnati, OH | $75,000 | $100,312 | $125,000 |
| 21 | Dallas-Fort Worth, TX | $75,000 | $99,447 | $120,000 |
| 22 | Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN | $78,000 | $99,367 | $120,000 |
| 23 | Fayetteville, AR | $85,000 | $98,911 | $112,000 |
| 24 | Atlanta, GA | $73,500 | $98,593 | $120,000 |
| 25 | Providence, RI | $75,000 | $97,164 | $121,000 |
Source: Reported salaries on Glassdoor from U.S. full-time data scientists for jobs held from January 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023
Among the highest paying metros for data scientists, San Jose ($145,563), San Francisco ($142,349) and Seattle ($128,818) each offer salaries well above other metros. For example, entry-level data scientists in San Jose bringing in a salary at the 25th percentile (or $115,000) earn 20 percent more than the average data scientist working in Providence. However, no matter where data scientists land their jobs in the U.S., they will be earning salaries that are well above the national average income.
Conclusion
Data scientists play a key role in bringing to life insights presented by big data by finding compelling stories within the data and working with the business to improve products, processes and decisions, pushing salaries well above the national average even across industry and metro.
Given the increase in data availability for analysis and the transferability in skills for data scientists, job seekers’ interests have expanded beyond tech since before the pandemic. Moreover, when broken out by more specialized subgroups, data scientists working in AI for example are still heavily concentrated in industries such as aerospace & defense, tech and manufacturing. Overall, where data is in abundance, data scientists will not be too far behind.
Methodology
This research analyzes two datasets from Glassdoor. First, we examine user clicks on “data scientist” job listings on Glassdoor’s jobs platform as an indicator of job seeker interest. For each job listing, we assign a canonical occupation based on the job title and an industry based on the employer. For the purposes of this research, we define “data scientist” as occupations in any of four categories: “data analyst and business intelligence”, “data scientist”, “data engineer”, “machine learning engineer”.
Second, we examine reported salaries on Glassdoor from U.S. full-time data scientists for jobs held from January 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023 by sector and metropolitan area.
Richard Johnson
Richard Johnson is an associate economist and data scientist at Glassdoor. As a member of the Economic Research team, he is passionate about doing research that provides evaluative and empowering insights to job-seekers--enabling them to take charge of their career paths--as well as employers looking for better ways to understand and serve a robust and ever-evolving labor market. Prior to Glassdoor, Richard was in the artificial intelligence branch at Accenture as a Data Scientist consultant, developing predictive models in the supply chain for various data pipelines and defense systems. Richard holds a master’s in the social sciences with a concentration in economics and computer science from the University of Chicago, a masters in applied economics from Georgetown University and a bachelor’s in economics and statistics from the University of North Texas.
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