How Much Do Data Analysts Make? 2024 Salary Guide

Data analysts use mathematical and analytical methods to transform data into better data-driven business decisions. As the amount of data available to businesses increases, so too does the demand for skilled data analysts to process and interpret it. Data analysts are typically paid well for their skills.

In this article, you’ll learn how much data analysts earn on average, as well as how various factors can impact your data analyst salary. Consider enrolling in Google's Data Analytics Professional Certificate and become job-ready as you learn at your own pace.

What is an average data analyst's salary?

According to job listing site Glassdoor, the average salary for a data analyst in the United States is $77,006 [1]. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a median annual salary of $85,720 [2]. Meanwhile, ZipRecruiter reports $82,640 [3].

While this range varies, each salary figure is significantly higher than the mean annual salary across all occupations in the United States, $61,900 [4].

Several factors can influence how much your salary will be as a data analyst. Let’s take a closer look at a few of these considerations.

Read more: What Does a Data Analyst Do? Your 2023 Career Guide

To land a role as a data analyst, you need to build skills in data cleaning, analysis, and visualization. You should be familiar with spreadsheets, SQL, R programming, and Tableau. Learn all this and more with Google's Data Analytics Professional Certificate:

Data analyst salaries by experience

One of the biggest factors influencing your salary is your experience level. In general, the more years you spend working as a data analyst, the more you can expect to earn. Here's how experience can impact your data analyst salary, according to Glassdoor [1]:

• 2 to 4 years (Data Analyst): $82,288

• 5 to 7 years (Senior Data Analyst): $109,880

• 8+ years (Principal Data Analyst): $156,322

Moving into a leadership role can further boost your earning potential. Glassdoor reports that analytics managers earn an average salary of $126,282 in the US, while directors of analytics earn $168,398 [5, 6].

Enhance your skills, advance your career

Looking to get ahead? Check out our articles on how to advance your data analyst career so you can earn more.

Data analyst salaries by industry

Just about every industry can use data analytics to drive better business decisions. Industries, where the demand for data professionals is highest, tend to be the same industries that pay the most on average. 

Finance and insurance, professional, scientific, and technical services, information technology, management, and manufacturing represent more than three-quarters of data job openings [7]. Here are salaries, as reported by Glassdoor:

• Financial data analyst: $80,034

• Technical data analyst: $78,332

• Scientific data analyst: $93,849

Data analyst salaries by location

Where you live can have a big impact on how much you make as a data analyst. Typically, working in a big city correlates to a higher salary (to match a higher cost of living). As more and more companies employ a geographically dispersed workforce (including remote workers), it’s common for companies to offer location-based salaries—salaries that consider location rather than merit alone.

According to Glassdoor, these are the midpoint salaries for data analysts in the following large US cities:

• San Francisco: $95,071

• New York: $80,187

• Boston: $77,931

• Washington, DC: $78,323

• Chicago: $76,022

Salaries for other data professionals

Getting a job as a data analyst might be the first step in your data career. As you gain experience and new data science skills, you might move into a more advanced or specialized position. Here are a few of them and their average US base salaries (Glassdoor). 

• Business analyst: $91,491

• Database administrator: $97,166

• Business intelligence analyst: $83,612

• Statistician: $82,562

• Data engineer: $114,196

• Data scientist: $122,969

• Data architect: $153,489

• Analytics manager: $129,620

• Machine learning engineer: $123,804

Read more: 4 Data Analyst Career Paths: Your Guide to Leveling Up

Job outlook for data analysts

As big data keeps getting bigger, so too does the need for skilled data analysts. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that data analyst jobs will grow 23 percent between 2022 and 2032, much faster than the average for all occupations [2]. More than 80 percent of companies surveyed in the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs 2020 report said they’d use big data by 2025. In the same report, data analysts and scientists appeared at the top of the list of jobs with increasing demand across industries [8].

Build the right skills, learn with Google

Start building the job-ready skills you need with the Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate. Learn key analytical skills, including SQL, R, and Tableau, directly from Google’s own team of data professionals and earn a shareable certificate from an industry leader for your resume. For those with data analytics skills, consider the Google Advanced Data Analytics Professional Certificate to open new job opportunities with higher salaries.