Data Scientists Career, Salary and Skills
Data Scientists have a BLS-reported national median annual wage of $120,230 based on the 2025 OEWS dataset, with reported national employment of 262,440. Wage data is published for 332 locations.
Occupation description
Develop and implement a set of techniques or analytics applications to transform raw data into meaningful information using data-oriented programming languages and visualization software. Apply data mining, data modeling, natural language processing, and machine learning to extract and analyze information from large structured and unstructured datasets. Visualize, interpret, and report data findings. May create dynamic data reports.
O*NET code
15-2051.00
Job zone
4
Typical education
Not recorded
Experience
None
National salary and employment
Median annual
$120,230
Hourly median
$57.80
Employment
262,440
Data year
2025
National salary distribution
Top skills
| Skill | Importance | Level |
|---|---|---|
| Mathematics | 4.38 | 5.00 |
| Critical Thinking | 4.25 | 4.62 |
| Reading Comprehension | 3.88 | 4.62 |
| Programming | 3.75 | — |
| Complex Problem Solving | 3.75 | 4.12 |
| Active Learning | 3.62 | 4.38 |
| Speaking | 3.62 | 3.75 |
| Writing | 3.50 | 4.12 |
| Active Listening | 3.50 | 3.75 |
| Judgment and Decision Making | 3.38 | 4.00 |
Typical tasks
- Analyze, manipulate, or process large sets of data using statistical software.
- Create graphs, charts, or other visualizations to convey the results of data analysis using specialized software.
- Test, validate, and reformulate models to ensure accurate prediction of outcomes of interest.
- Deliver oral or written presentations of the results of mathematical modeling and data analysis to management or other end users.
- Recommend data-driven solutions to key stakeholders.
- Identify business problems or management objectives that can be addressed through data analysis.
- Compare models using statistical performance metrics, such as loss functions or proportion of explained variance.
- Clean and manipulate raw data using statistical software.
Technology
- Alteryx software
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud EC2
- Amazon Redshift
- Amazon Simple Storage Service S3
- Amazon Web Services AWS SageMaker
- Amazon Web Services AWS software
- Apache Airflow
- Apache Cassandra
- Apache Hadoop
- Apache Hive
- Apache Kafka
- Apache MXNet
- Apache Pig
- Apache Spark
Data Scientists salary by location
Areas with the highest reported employment for this occupation.
- Data Scientists Salary in CAMedian $141,590 · Employment 39,310
- Data Scientists Salary in TXMedian $122,090 · Employment 25,860
- Data Scientists Salary in NYMedian $130,460 · Employment 23,970
- Data Scientists Salary in New York, NYMedian $135,980 · Employment 23,160
- Data Scientists Salary in PAMedian $106,850 · Employment 13,810
- Data Scientists Salary in NCMedian $119,090 · Employment 11,430
- Data Scientists Salary in ILMedian $106,560 · Employment 10,520
- Data Scientists Salary in San Francisco, CAMedian $170,110 · Employment 10,460
- Data Scientists Salary in FLMedian $115,820 · Employment 10,240
- Data Scientists Salary in Dallas, TXMedian $127,750 · Employment 10,120
- Data Scientists Salary in Los Angeles, CAMedian $129,740 · Employment 9,850
- Data Scientists Salary in WAMedian $163,350 · Employment 9,600
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Career and skills data: O*NET 31.0 (onetcenter.org). Salary and employment data: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS, 2025 (bls.gov/oes). Figures are published survey estimates, not real-time market data.