Industry Insights

This blog is contributed by Burtch Works’ Data Science recruiting team.While it is impossible to say with certainty what 2023 will bring, we thought it would be helpful to conduct a quick pulse check to get a deeper understanding of how the recent economic environment has impacted candidates’ decisions to change jobs.In 2021, and for most of 2022, the hiring market accelerated rapidly, with many data science and analytics teams swiftly hiring while also battling with attrition during the ‘Great Resignation’. We reported earlier this year that in our sample of 400 professionals, 33% changed jobs from June 2021 to June 2022. For this research, we will be focusing on job change data from June 2022 to November 2022.

Average Tenure and Job Change for Data Scientists & AI Professionals

For this research, we examined a sample of 200 professionals to examine:

1. How many had changed jobs since June 2022 to November 2022.
2. And, among those who had changed jobs, how long did they stay in their previous position?

For this research we always focus on professionals who had joined a new company for their job change, and do not include those who received a promotion or made a transition within the same company.

26% of professionals in our sample changed jobs from June 2022 to November 2022, meaning there was a slight decline when compared to the 33% that changed jobs from June 2021 to June 2022.Among the 26% that changed jobs, we found that their average tenure at their previous role was about 5.6 years. These figures do not include professionals who received a promotion or stayed within the same company.

Interestingly, we found that the majority of professionals that changed jobs are early mid-level professionals with 6-10 years of experience. In the past, we have typically noticed that professionals who are earlier in their careers (0-5 years of experiences) tended to change jobs more frequently and held shorter tenure than those who were in the later stages of their careers. Among data scientists and AI Professionals with 0-5 years’ experience, 40% changed jobs and their average tenure in their previous position was 4.3 years. For professionals with 6-10 years’ experience, we found 54% changed jobs and their average tenure was 6.6 years in their previous position.Additionally, most candidates (72%) who switched jobs did not switch industries, choosing instead to stay in the same industry in which they already have experience.

What does this mean?

The broader market has experienced immense volatility over the fast few years; there was also massive turnover in the labor market, due to the Great Resignation, as many professionals resumed their job searches or sought to change their working situation due to other pandemic related factors.Following this immense “shuffle” of the greater hiring market, many pundits have claimed that the economy is showing signs of weakening, Although it may be too early for these headlines and claims to greatly impact candidates’ decisions to change jobs, we will continue to monitor these trends as we head into the next year! Be sure to check the blog often for our latest topical trends and insights.