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Data Scientists

Computer and Mathematical · SOC 15-2051

46.1% AI Exposure — Very High
$120,230
Median Annual Salary
Average
O*NET Outlook
Proj. Annual Openings
262,440
Employment (OEWS 2025)
+25.4%/yr
Empl. growth (2021–2025)
54/100
AI Resiliency Score

AI exposure from the Anthropic Economic Index (2025); salary from BLS; skills from O*NET. See /sources.

Decision card

Career Evidence Passport

SOC 15-2051 evidence across exposure, wages, projections, postings, certified LCAs, skills, and transitions.

Proxy / seed data labeledDescriptive-only
SOC exposure
46.1%
Very High · Anthropic AEI
Automation friction
27/100
Low friction; broad SOC seed ORS job-requirements coverage.
Wages
$120,230
H-1B offered wage $120,120; LCAs are filings.
Projected openings
BLS EP 2024–2034; employment change +33.5%.
Observed/proxy demand
31,820
FY2025 certified LCAs; 5,882 postings in 2025.

Skill evidence

Reading ComprehensionCritical ThinkingCritical ThinkingActive ListeningSpeaking
  • H-1B values are certified Labor Condition Applications, not visa approvals.
  • Job postings are seed-static / seed-derived; treat as provider-ready proxy coverage until observed provider data is wired in.
  • Transition matches are directional skill-overlap context, not placement guarantees.
  • This release is a FutureGrid broad-SOC seed derived from public BLS ORS requirement concepts and categories, not direct occupation-level ORS survey estimates. It describes job requirements, not worker ability, AI capability, or displacement probability. Automation friction is a FutureGrid derived score and should be read alongside exposure, demand, wage, and projection signals.

Best transitions from here

Explore all pathways

Lower AI-exposure roles that reuse your skills, ranked by a transition score (skills that transfer, safety gain, pay and retraining effort).

AI Exposure Analysis

AI Exposure46.1%
AI Resiliency54/100
Exposure BandVery High
Sector Avg. Exposure35.3%

Across AI measures

Multiple exposure lenses for this occupation.

57.8%
Consensus
Actual adoption · Anthropic46.1%
AI capability · OpenAI69.5%

AI could do ~69.5% of this role but only ~46.1% is currently done with AI — a large capability-vs-adoption gap.

Top Skills

1.Reading Comprehension
2.Critical Thinking
3.Critical Thinking
4.Active Listening
5.Speaking

H-1B Visa Sponsorship Demand

View full H-1B trends →

Certified H-1B Labor Condition Applications naming this occupation, FY2016–FY2025. A descriptive high-skill labor-demand signal — employer filings, not visa approvals or individual outcomes. Note: one LCA can cover multiple worker positions.

78,687
Decade Total (Certified LCAs)
31,820
FY2025 Volume
6% of all H-1B filings in FY2025
$120,120
Median Offered Wage (Latest Year)
#11 of 776
Rank by Total Volume
H-1B filing volume, FY2016–FY2025

O*NET occupation profile

What this work involves

Develop and implement a set of techniques or analytics applications to transform raw data into meaningful information using data-oriented programming languages and visualization software. Apply data mining, data modeling, natural language processing, and machine learning to extract and analyze information from large structured and unstructured datasets. Visualize, interpret, and report data findings. May create dynamic data reports.

Representative Tasks

  • Analyze, manipulate, or process large sets of data using statistical software.
  • Apply feature selection algorithms to models predicting outcomes of interest, such as sales, attrition, and healthcare use.
  • Apply sampling techniques to determine groups to be surveyed or use complete enumeration methods.
  • Clean and manipulate raw data using statistical software.
  • Compare models using statistical performance metrics, such as loss functions or proportion of explained variance.

Detailed Work Activities

  • Apply mathematical principles or statistical approaches to solve problems in scientific or applied fields.
  • Advise others on analytical techniques.
  • Analyze business or financial data.
  • Analyze data to identify or resolve operational problems.
  • Analyze data to identify trends or relationships among variables.

Tools & Technologies

Amazon Web Services AWS software · hotMicrosoft Azure software · hotMicrosoft PowerPoint · hotPyTorch · hotSAS · hotTensorFlow · hotThe MathWorks MATLAB · hotAmazon Elastic Compute Cloud EC2 · hotAmazon Redshift · hotApache Kafka · hot

Employment Projections & AI Exposure

5
Occupations Shown
31.9%
Avg AI Exposure
4
Bright Outlook
Horizontal bar chart showing occupations with the highest projected annual openings. Each bar length represents annual projected openings. Color uses a gradient from violet (lower) to cyan (higher). Summary statistics are shown above the chart.

Employment & Wage Trend

BLS OEWS, 2019–2025


Occupation Employment & Wage TrendMulti-year BLS OEWS history for SOC 15-2051: 2021 — employment: 105,980, median wage: $100,910; 2022 — employment: 159,630, median wage: $103,500; 2023 — employment: 192,710, median wage: $108,020; 2025 — employment: 262,440, median wage: $120,230.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS). See /sources.

Sector Comparison

MetricThis CareerSector Average
AI Exposure46.1%35.3%
OutlookAverage19% Bright
Median Salary$120,230N/A
AI Resiliency54/100N/A