Dive Brief:
- More than half of professionals say insufficient data science talent is a top barrier to the technology's adoption, according to Anaconda's State of Data Science 2022 report.
- Nine in 10 professionals say their organizations are concerned about the impact of the current talent shortage. Anaconda, a data science and machine learning software company, surveyed nearly 3,500 individuals globally, a mix of students, academics and other professionals.
- Companies are addressing talent shortages by training existing employees, enabling remote work and partnering with academic institutions for talent development, according to the report.
Dive Insight:
Data science roles remain particularly challenging to fill thanks, in part, to appeal across industries.
Finding data scientists is difficult because the position is more a form of literacy than a specific skill, according to Peter Wang, co-founder and CEO of Anaconda.
"There are some people we're going to specialize in being data scientists, but if you're a business, you're going to want to get ready for everyone in the business being able to do some better levels of data reasoning," Wang said.
Six in 10 hiring managers said data science and analytics roles will be the hardest to fill in the next six months, according to a separate study from Upwork.
Employers are responding to the need with dollars, salary trends show. Glassdoor placed the role of data scientist in the No. 3 slot on its Best Jobs in America list for 2022, commanding a median base salary of $120,000. Software engineers, ranked eighth, earn a median salary of $116,000.
An inability to extend data science literacy throughout the organization can lead to higher levels of attrition, Wang said.
"There's a center of gravity that pulls towards this future [data] capability, and if the rest of the organization doesn't understand the value of that, they're just going to put up blockers," Wang said. "That slows the data science team down and then guess what happens? Those data scientists get frustrated and they leave for some faster company."
