Guide to Data Analyst Salaries

Data Analyst Average Salary

When people ask about the average data analyst salary, the most reliable public figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program. OEWS publishes both mean and median wage estimates: the mean is the average wage across all workers in an occupation, while the median is the wage at which half of the workers in an occupation earn more and half earn less. This guide uses median annual wages. BLS reports pay by occupation rather than by job title, and a data analyst title can fall under several of these occupations, depending on whether the work leans toward business and marketing research, toward modeling and optimization, or toward finance.

Pay within each occupation still varies with industry, experience and education, which the sections below cover. Most positions require at least a bachelor’s degree: O*NET places market research analysts, financial and investment analysts and data scientists in Job Zone Four, where most occupations require a four-year bachelor’s degree, but some do not.

Data Analyst Salary by Industry

Data analyst pay can vary widely by industry, largely because analysts are used differently across industries. For example, roles focused on business intelligence, marketing analytics, or pricing may look closer to “market research analyst” work, while more technical analytics roles (forecasting, optimization, modeling) may align more closely with operations research or data science.

Because BLS doesn’t report wages for a single, standardized “data analyst” occupation—its 2018 Standard Occupational Classification has no detailed occupation by that name—a practical way to understand industry-driven pay differences is to look at BLS occupations that commonly overlap with data analyst job titles and compare what those roles earn in the industries where they work.

For example, BLS data for market research analysts and marketing specialists (a common proxy for business-facing analyst work) show a May 2025 median annual wage of $102,670 in the information sector, $99,850 in management of companies and enterprises and $94,330 in finance and insurance. In professional, scientific, and technical services, the sector that employs the most of these workers (248,820 in May 2025), the median was $79,970. Our market research analyst career guide covers that role in more detail.

For more quantitative “analytics” roles, BLS shows that operations research analysts can earn substantially more in certain industries, with May 2025 median annual wages of $141,130 in the federal executive branch and $108,120 in manufacturing.

At the most advanced end of analytics, data scientists earned May 2025 median annual wages of $141,440 in the information sector, $132,380 in computer systems design and related services and $128,050 in management of companies and enterprises. See our data scientist salary guide for a closer look at that occupation.

Finally, if you’re comparing finance-specific analyst roles, BLS reports that financial and investment analysts had a median annual wage of $102,740 overall in May 2025, and a median of $124,370 in securities, commodity contracts, and other financial investments and related activities. Learn more about how to become a financial analyst.

Data Analyst Salary by Experience

The BLS does not report wages for a single standardized “data analyst” occupation or break down pay by years of experience. What it does report are wage percentiles, which show how widely pay varies within each occupation. Percentiles describe the spread of pay across all workers in an occupation: the 10th percentile isn’t an entry-level salary, and the 90th percentile isn’t a guaranteed ceiling.

BLS reported the following annual wage bands for May 2025:

• Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists (often overlaps with business-facing data analyst work)
  Lowest 10%: < $43,390 | Median: $78,760 | Highest 10%: > $155,480
• Operations Research Analysts (often overlaps with more quantitative/optimization analytics)
  Lowest 10%: < $57,060 | Median: $88,940 | Highest 10%: > $159,910
• Data Scientists (a common “next step” for advanced analytics and modeling)
  Lowest 10%: < $67,240 | Median: $120,230 | Highest 10%: > $199,130

Senior and manager pay

For comparison, BLS reported a median annual wage of $175,140 for computer and information systems managers in May 2025, higher than the median for any of the analyst occupations above. O*NET places the occupation in Job Zone Four, where most occupations require a four-year bachelor’s degree, but some do not, and employees usually need several years of work-related experience, on-the-job training and/or vocational training.

Bottom line: BLS doesn’t track “years of experience” for data analyst salaries, but its wage percentiles show a wide range of pay within each analyst-related occupation, and the median wage for computer and information systems managers is considerably higher than the medians for those analyst occupations.

^{Sources: Median annual wages are May 2025 national estimates from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program. Job Zones are from the O*NET OnLine profiles for market research analysts and marketing specialists, operations research analysts, financial and investment analysts, data scientists and computer and information systems managers.}

Career-development options for analysts include leadership training, stretch projects in their current role, a bootcamp or an analytics-focused master’s program. Moving into a more technical occupation is another option: data scientists had the highest median annual wage of the analyst occupations in the table above. Compare the two paths in our guide to data analyst vs. data scientist careers.

Does a Master’s Degree Increase Data Analyst Salary?

BLS doesn’t publish data analyst pay by degree level, but two federal sources help answer the question. Across the whole workforce, earnings rise with education: in 2024, full-time wage and salary workers age 25 and over with a master’s degree had median usual weekly earnings of $1,840, compared with $1,543 for those with a bachelor’s degree and $2,278 for those with a doctoral degree, according to BLS Current Population Survey data. These figures cover all occupations, so they show a general pattern rather than what a degree is worth in any one analytics job.

O*NET also asks occupational experts how much education a new hire needs in specific analyst occupations. For operations research analysts, 43% of 21 occupational experts said a master’s degree is required, and the occupation is in Job Zone Five, where most occupations require graduate school. For market research analysts and marketing specialists, 30% of 20 occupational experts said a master’s degree is required, while 70% said a bachelor’s degree is required. The sample sizes and the dates these ratings were last updated (August 2024 for operations research analysts and August 2026 for market research analysts) come from the O*NET 31.0 Database.

If you’re weighing a graduate degree, compare it against the roles you’re targeting: in O*NET’s data, a master’s degree is expected more often for operations research analysts, whose work centers on mathematical modeling and optimization, than for market research analysts and marketing specialists. You can compare master’s in data science programs as a next step.