Data Analyst vs Business Analyst Salary | Towards Data Science

IntroductionData AnalystBusiness AnalystSummaryReferences
Introduction
Data Analyst
Business Analyst
Summary
References
Note:
This article is the fifth, a part of a continuing series on reported salaries between popular data/tech roles. I will link the other four at the end of this article.
Like I have said for the previous articles in this series, this article aims not to compare roles as if one deserves more money or not, but is instead a guide allowing professionals in these two fields to assess against their current or expected salary. Keep in mind that these salary values are more general and no one website can be enough to assess your worth. It is the direction of these values that can be utilized as a tool for you to have when dealing with salary in the future.
Data analysts and business analysts can be virtually the same role at a particular company, while the same can be said for the opposite — they can be very different at other companies. With that being said, there are certain factors to include when assessing salary, such as specific tools and skills required, as well as more general things like location and years of experience. Knowing this concept, we can look into specific examples from real reported data with these factors in mind below.
Just how data analyst and business analyst roles can be similar or vary widely, so can data analyst positions with themselves. Some of the important goals of data analysts can include analyzing past data, or predicting future data. This difference is an example of something that can therefore cause a difference in salary. Just like any job, there are factors like years of experience and the specific job title that you have that can influence salary.
In general, I tend to see data analyst positions that include more technical skills to have an increase in salary, and will report more on specific examples later on.
Here are some of the various seniority levels of data analysts and their respective salaries [3] :
Average Overall Data Analyst → $61,754
Average Entry-Level Data Analyst → $56,383 (1 year)
Average Early-Career Data Analyst → $61,179 (1–4 years)
Average Mid-Career Data Analyst → $69,251 (5–9 years)
Average Experienced Data Analyst → $71,512 (10–19 years)
This salary data is gathered from PayScale, and if you would like a more specific estimate, then you can use the salary survey [4].
Do I agree with these numbers?
No.
I think that these salaries should all be higher here because data analysts can perform so many skills and often bring a lot of value to a company.
Let’s look more at specific cities and skills to get a better idea of what salaries are on average and how much they can change based on these factors. Below, I will apply a few of these factors and you will see how salary is affected.
Here are some popular cities and some other cities with their respective salary averages for mid-career data analysts:
Denver, Colorado → $67,068
Dallas, Texas→ $69,320
Washington, District of Columbia → $77,522
San Francisco, California → $98,627
As you can see, just looking at different cities creates a wide range of salary. Now let’s dive a little deeper and add some specific skills.
Denver, Colorado → $78,108 with Python
Dallas, Texas → $78,341 with Data Modeling
Washington, District of Columbia → $80,000 with Database Management & Reporting
San Francisco, California → $114,520 with Statistical Analysis
By adding just one skill to the same city, you can see how the salary jumps up significantly, for example, adding statistics to San Francisco added a little more than 15K. You can see how important it is to add as many skills that you are competent at to gain the best estimate for your salary. It is critical to make these skills known to a recruiter as well, and not assume that they think you know a particular skill.
Business analysts make differ from data analysts in that they tend to have a wider range of required skills. Some can, of course, expect to know the same skills as a data analyst, while some might be completely different. My opinion is that if you are a business analyst and know more than Microsoft Excel and Tableau, and can also use SQL and Python, you will be a more competitive applicant.
For these averages, we will be looking at the “Unspecified Type” Business Analyst. This labeling goes to show you already that this range is perhaps the biggest of any tech/data role.
I will be using PayScale [6] as well for these salaries:
Average Overall Business Analyst → $61,955
Average Entry-Level Business Analyst → $56,915 (1 year)
Average Early-Career Business Analyst → $60,692 (1–4 years)
Average Mid-Career Business Analyst → $66,750 (5–9 years)
Average Experienced Business Analyst→ $70,632 (10–19 years)
Because these averages are in the “Unspecific Type” category, I believe they are expectedly lower, and of course, introducing more technical skills will increase your salary expectations.
Just like we did with data analyst salaries, let's dive deeper into the different cities/locations as well as business analyst roles with different skills.
San Francisco, California → $78,743
Seattle, Washington → $70,420
Houston, Texas → $59,223
These averages all seem a little low so let’s look at how specific skills add value to the salary amount:
San Francisco, California → $82,148 with SQL
Seattle, Washington → $71,312 with Process Improvement
Houston, Texas → $71,000 with Financial Analysis
These improvements are not as significant or as big as the ones that we saw for data analysts. The biggest takeaway here is that the skills do vary between these two roles and other skills that are less related to data analytics and more related to business metrics themselves help to increase the salary. This concept is shown in the biggest jump of adding financial analysis to the city of Houston, Texas with a ~ 10K increase.
We have now seen how different factors can affect both of these roles, and affect them differently. Overall, researching from multiple sources is the best way to have a better understanding of all of the factors that contribute to the specific salary number or range that you are looking for. Other factors include bonuses, shares, education, certifications, your resume, negotiation, and how you perform in the interview.
To summarize, here are some key takeaways of data analyst versus business analyst salaries:
* Average US data analyst salary → $61,754* Average US business analyst (unspecific type) salary → $61,955* From the factors we investigated, it looks like data analysts might have the opportunity for a bigger salary amount, despite their overall lower average* Several factors contribute to salary, the most important most likely being seniority, city, and skills
I hope you found my article both interesting and useful. Please feel free to comment down below if you agree or disagree with these salary comparisons. Why or why not? What other factors do you think are important to point out in regards to salary? These can certainly be clarified even further, but I hope I was able to shed some light on the differences between data analyst and business analyst salaries.
Lastly, I can ask the same question again, how do you see salaries being impacted by remote positions, especially when the city is such a big factor in determining salary?
Thank you for reading!
I am not affiliated with any of these companies.
Please feel free to check out my profile, Matt Przybyla, and other articles, as well as subscribe to receive email notifications for my blogs by following the link below, or by clicking on the subscribe icon on the top of the screen by the follow icon, and reach out to me on LinkedIn if you have any questions or comments.
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I have also written a similar article discussing data scientists vs business analyst salary here [7], and data scientist vs data engineer salaries here [8], as well as machine learning engineer salaries versus data scientist salaries here [9], and the differences between data scientists and data analyst salaries here [10]. These articles outline and highlight similar characteristics of each, respective salary. Keep in mind that for all of these articles, these are not my salaries, and are reported by PayScale, and other actual data scientists, business analysts, data engineers, data analysts, and machine learning engineers. So, these articles are in turn discussions around real data and are intended for you to better gain an understanding of what makes a role (in general), increase or decrease in salary amount based on certain factors.
[1] Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash, (2017)
[2] Photo by Alexandru Acea on Unsplash, (2018)
[3] PayScale, Data Analyst Salary, (2021)
[4] PayScale, PayScale Salary Survey, (2021)
[5] Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash, (2018)
[6] PayScale, Business Analyst (Unspecified Type), (2021)
[7] M.Przybyla, Data Scientist vs Business Analyst Salary, (2021)
[8] M. Przybyla, Data Scientist vs Data Engineer Salary, (2021)
[9] M.Przybyla, Data Scientist vs Machine Learning Engineer Salary, (2021)
[10] M. Przybyla, Data Scientist vs Data Analyst Salary, (2021)