Survey: Huge demand for talented analytics professionals in Australia driving salaries upwards

Sydney, Australia – 12 December 2013 – Australian business and government agencies are generating huge demand for analytics professionals, driving salaries for high-quality practitioners upwards, according to the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia (IAPA) 2013 Skills and Salary Survey Report released today.

The report shows the median salary for an analytics professional to be almost twice the median Australian full-time salary -  fifty percent earning over $110,000 annually.  Though, according to the report, salary plays little role in determining satisfaction levels of those in analytics.

Despite broad media attention on big data, only 18 percent of survey respondents ranked handling big data as a significant challenge. Bigger challenges were seen around analytics as a business discipline, namely developing skills, convincing the organisation of the value of business analytics and persuading people to act on insight to drive value.

“The global trend of demand hugely outstripping supply is also true in Australia with 50 percent of industry managers reporting difficulty filling analytics professionals’ positions,” said IAPA Chairman and Director, Insight Solutions at Deloitte, Doug Campbell.

“There’s no better time to be, or become, an analytics professional,” stated Campbell. “The business analytics field is still relatively young and developing however significant demand for analytics professionals is being driven from the increasing pervasiveness of digital impacting organisations’ costs, processes and customers.  Analytics professionals are being sought to help unlock value through providing business insights to a wide variety of industries from banking, government, health, transportation, utilities, insurance and education.”

IAPA provides analytics professionals with a networking hub, professional exposure and supports ongoing professional development.  For managers seeking analytics expertise, IAPA can help connect practitioners to opportunities.

IAPA has over 3500 members with 475 qualified responses to the survey of which 55 percent were active practitioners and the remainder from various management functions.

Copies of the survey results can downloaded from www.iapa.org.au

ENDS