Careers in Statistics Evolve and Expand

Science Careers, a publication that provides a variety of content to assist scientists of all disciplines, backgrounds and experience levels navigate their career path, this week published online an article highlighting the growing opportunities in the field of statistics.

In the article, reporter Puneet Kollipara wrote the following about the job opportunities: “…the range of statistics jobs is expanding, and many traditional jobs are changing. As technology proliferates, the mathematical methods at the heart of the discipline are reaching into new fields. Personal electronics, the Internet, scientific instruments (notably in genomics), and e-business are spitting out troves of data that are crying out for analysis, spawning a ‘big data’ revolution. All that new data has the potential to provide new insights for businesses, new research possibilities for scholars, and new information that policymakers can draw on, among many other possibilities. It also means new jobs.”

Kollipara goes on to explain the expected demand for statisticians in the short-term future: “The [U.S.] Bureau of Labor Statistics…projects that statistics jobs will grow 27% from 2012 to 2022, putting the profession in the ‘much faster than the average for all occupations’ growth category. The bureau puts statisticians’ median annual salary in 2012 at $75,560. “Meanwhile, a report from the McKinsey Global Institute, a consulting firm, says that businesses

spanning virtually all sectors—from technology and social networking to pharmaceuticals and health care—are using information gleaned from large data sets to help them operate more smoothly or to provide better products or services. In order to meet the demands of the big data age, the study says, the United States must train 140,000 to 190,000 more quantitatively or analytically skilled people by 2018 than the country is on track to train.”

Click here to read the entire article. Science Careers is a sister publication of Science magazine, one of the most prestigious and widely cited scientific journals in the world.