Organizations are increasingly collecting and using large amounts of data. However, data alone lacks value. It has to be turned into information to have value, and it is data scientists who are responsible for making that happen.
Data scientists are in exceptionally high demand across all industry sectors, in the US along 2.7 million data scientist jobs will need to be filled by end of 2020 but there’s a shortage of people with the experience to fill the role.
Increased demand for data scientists
Data scientists, data engineers and business analysts are among the most sought-after positions in America. In fact, job postings for these roles have risen by 256% since December 2013, more than tripling and is set to continue.
Despite this boom in data scientist job openings, the supply of skilled applicants is growing at a slower pace. In New York alone, there was a shortage of almost 30,000 data scientists between 2015-2018.
The short of the story is the educational system isn’t producing enough data scientists (which isn’t surprising given the specialist nature of the role) so a change in tact is needed to meet demand.