Industry Insights

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2017 Update: Analytics Salary Increases when Changing Jobs

Posted
May 22, 2017

With analytics hiring going strong, and more professionals changing jobs, we decided to take a look at the analytics salary increases professionals can receive when changing between data analytics jobs (or, really, changing companies). For many, this can be a great opportunity for a salary bump. With more professionals pouring into the market, however, how much can one reasonably expect?What we found, when looking at analytics professionals who changed jobs and received a salary increase in the last year, was that these increases are usually higher than the generally-reported 2-4% increase one might expect each year as a “merit increase” for staying at your current job. The overall median increase in base salary was 14.3% - not too shabby!The charts below show the distribution of analytics salary increases, as well as median base salary increases by job level.

Slightly more than a quarter of analytics professionals received increases between 1-10%, and another half of the sample received increases between 11-20%. As you can see, salary increases above 25% are relatively rare.

Based on the job level data, we felt there were a few key insights to point out:

1. More supply at the junior end is lowering median base salary increases when changing jobs.

Building on a trend we’ve noticed in our salary studies (if you’re not sure what those are, see “more information” below!), there has been an increase in the supply of junior-level individual contributors as the Big Data hype encourages more students and professionals from other fields enter the market.

2. Lower supply at the senior end is raising base salary increases when changing jobs.

With more established analytics and data science teams hiring and expanding, as well as more firms looking to hire a leader to build a function, the demand for specialized quantitative leaders has increased considerably. In industries like tech the demand has historically been strong, but as other legacy companies create new teams it has added to the demand. Many companies are looking for leaders who have come up through analytics jobs rather than marketing or general business, and that narrows the available pool considerably.Note: these figures do not include professionals who received a promotion or otherwise stayed within the same company, or those who changed companies but did not receive an increase, since these changes are usually made as a result of downsizing or other personal considerations, such as accommodating a spouse’s relocation.

More Analytics Salary Information

Here at Burtch Works, we know that salaries are a hot topic, especially in predictive analytics and data science. And we should know, since we release comprehensive, annual salary reports for our specialty areas, including our newly-released 2017 data science report, as well as for predictive analytics, and marketing research. So if this post whet your appetite for more data on analytics salaries, bonuses, and demographic information, those reports can be downloaded for free here.As always, we’ll continue to monitor shifts in the market, and post more data and insights here on the blog when we have them, so be sure to keep an eye out for updates!

Interested in our salary research on data scientists and predictive analytics professionals? Download our studies using the button below.

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Want highlights from our 2019 Data Science & Analytics report, including salaries, demographic comparisons, and hiring market analysis? Watch our 15-minute RECAP video below!