An article was posted March 8, 2019 on Knowledge@Wharton
was titled, “What’s Driving the Demand for Data Scientists?
Krause examines the trends and discusses what's driving demand.
Krause examines the trends and discusses what's driving demand.
To state the obvious, the demand for data scientists and analysts is being driven by the growing
importance of data analytics to businesses and governments.
"The ability to collect and analyze data has
become a mission-critical objective to many business organizations – who now
face the challenge of finding, recruiting
and retaining data scientists," according to David Krause, who teaches Marquette University's FinTech Topics course.
He continued, "The Wharton article observed that demand for data scientists is no longer confined to the
high-tech and software realms. The past several
years have seen massive growth — up to a 20 times growth in data science-based
jobs in sectors like finance, education, marketing and manufacturing. They noted
that there is a widening gap between the needs of organizations and the
abilities of job candidates to fulfill those needs."
A Google Trends analysis conducted
by Dr. David Krause, Marquette University Applied Investment Management
Director and Associate Professor of Practice, showed the massive growth in the
search term ‘data scientist’ in the US since 2004.
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| Google Trends analysis of relative search on the term 'data scientist' in the US since 2004 |
The data analytics boom is the result of the massive growth of technology and the increasing use of the internet. This use has resulted in large and unwieldy amounts of text and quantitative data that has been collected by governments and businesses.
Researchers using data analytic
methods have been mining the vast amount of data to shed light on large-scale
economic, consumer and societal trends. The result over the past five years has
been a gap in the number of analysts with the skills to mine the data.
LinkedIn
has reported that data science and machine learning-related jobs, taken
together, represent five of the top 15 growing jobs in America today. And there
are thousands more jobs in the field than there are qualified professionals to
fill them.
Krause’s Google Trends analysis over the past five years confirms
the interest in data science.
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| Google Trends relative hits on 'data scientist' over past 5 years in the US |
Krause noted, “Looking at the relative
search hits for data scientists by state across the US over the past five years
reveals several states leading the pack – notably California, Washington and
Massachusetts.”
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| Google Trends heat map of the term 'data scientist' over the past 5 years |
“Students in my FinTech Topics
course are Marquette are well aware of the opportunities for financial analysts
with strong data skills,” Krause continued. “Python, R, and Tableau are just a
few of the tools we are striving to teach our finance students. We want our
graduates to posses the skills that are in demand – along with critical
thinking and good communication skills.”
.
