Data Scientists

At $120,230 — $70,210 a year clear of the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — Data Scientists sits at the top of what BLS publishes. Read the gate before the figure: at this level there is always one, and it is usually measured in years.

262,440 people work as Data Scientists — large enough that the occupation is always hiring somewhere and always losing people somewhere else. Constant demand is security; it is rarely leverage.

Mathematical science work suits people who are willing to be the person who says the estimate is uncertain, and who can explain why to an audience that wanted a single number.

No verified preparation time is on file for Data Scientists. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.

$73,220 separates the bottom quarter of Data Scientists at $85,660 from the top quarter at $158,880. At a 1.9x ratio the midpoint is a weak guide to your own first year — find out which end you would be entering at.

Even at the 25th percentile Data Scientists pays $85,660, $35,640 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Almost the entire distribution sits above the typical American wage, which is rare and worth weighing against the entry cost.

Avoid it if you need your conclusions accepted; a large part of this job is being overruled by someone who preferred a different number.

There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 262,440 people employed as Data Scientists; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.

At 1.9x, the distribution for Data Scientists is open enough that specialisation starts to pay. The distance from $85,660 to $158,880 is mostly what you can do that others in the same title cannot.

The middle half of this field earns between $85,660 and $158,880. That is $73,220 of range, with $120,230 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.

The 75th percentile is $158,880. Reaching it from the $120,230 midpoint is $38,650 a year; reaching it from the $85,660 that the bottom quarter of Data Scientists earn is $73,220.

$34,570 down to $85,660, $38,650 up to $158,880: the midpoint of Data Scientists is centred in its own middle half. That symmetry is why the median and the average would say much the same thing here, which is not true of most pages on this site.

Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $41.18 at the bottom quarter, $57.80 at the midpoint, $76.38 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.