Alteryx and Partners Reveal our 2016 Data Analytics Predictions

[BobL]

Last week we held our annual predictions webinar where we were joined by some of our partners to make bold predictions about the year ahead. This year I was joined by Francois Ajenstat, VP of Product Management at Tableau Software; and Clarke Patterson, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Cloudera. If you missed the webinar, or want to see it again, you can watch it here.

Without giving too much away, our first prediction, “Data analyst will be the hottest corporate job,” turned out to be one of the most likely to come true according to a live poll of webinar attendees. This is GREAT news for all of the 4 to 6 million data analysts out there¹.

If you do a quick search on many Career pages, there’s unprecedented demand for data analysts right now. Data analyst jobs are growing at a rate of 27%, which puts it into one of the highest categories for growth, far exceeding the national average for all jobs which is 11%². And companies are paying well for good talent. The average salary for business analysts today is $76,000, and is projected to climb rapidly as data analysis becomes less of a nice to have and more of a requirement for many organizations.

On the supply side, nice starting salaries and abundant opportunities are causing lots of new people to get into analytics. We’re seeing analytics programs become far more prevalent at universities, with degree programs specializing in analytics cropping up all over. Courses on analytics aren’t just part of computer science degrees anymore – they’re now a standard part of business school curriculum and even other degrees.

I’m fortunate that I get to speak to data analysts on a regular basis who are doing some incredible things inside their organization. I shared a couple of stories during the webinar, but to hear more you can check out some of the great stories that were told during our Inspire 2015 user conference. We’re going to hear a lot more of those success stories in 2016 as “data analyst” takes its rightful place as the hottest corporate job.

Check out our other eight predictions for 2016 by watching a replay of our webinar. And then, since we still have a few weeks left in 2015, make your own bold predictions for 2016. Let us know at #Alteryx and #Predictions2016!

¹US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

²US Bureau of Labor Statistics.