August Data Science Job Market Report (2024)

August 2024 began with a stock market scare that quickly bounced back. Trends in the July data science job market give a promising outlook:

• Improvements since July 2023: Data science job postings grew 130% year over year after hitting rock bottom in July 2023, while data analyst openings grew 63% in the same time period.
• Growth in AI & research positions: Research scientist job openings grew 30% month over month in July 2024, while AI engineering openings grew 7% in the same time period.
• Data science stabilized as a role: The share of data science job openings stabilized in 2024, reversing the trend that began last year toward less specialized data roles, such as data analytics or business analytics.
• Job market shifts back toward big tech: Data analyst and data engineering openings for FAANG and Big Tech companies more than doubled year over year, while the number of companies interviewing data scientists decreased 70% year over year.
• Layoffs dropped in July: Layoffs in tech dropped 10.2% month over month and 15.3% year over year, but they grew in the first few days of August.

The number of job openings in data science improved after hitting an extreme low in July 2023, when companies limited hiring after the wave of mass layoffs.

When comparing July 2024 to July 2023, the number of open positions in data science soared year over year. Openings for data scientists grew 130% year over year.

The economy has been recovering at an annualized growth rate of 2.8% during Q2 2024. After workforce adjustments during mass layoffs in 2023, the data science job market is on the rise.

AI advancements are creating new opportunities in data science. Job openings in research science grew 29% month over month, while AI engineering openings grew 7% month over month.

Job openings rose 12.4% for data analysts and 7.5% for data engineers month over month. Openings in data science dropped 9.4% in the same time period.

Openings in machine learning engineering dropped 30.5% month over month, but machine learning engineering is a smaller market in which small absolute changes are significant.

Even though there was a monthly rise in data analytics openings and a monthly drop in data science openings, this doesn’t seem to be a consistent trend.

In 2023, companies began hiring more data analysts and fewer data scientists due to the higher salaries associated with data scientists. However, this trend stopped toward the end of 2023.

In 2024, the proportion of job openings for data scientists has remained steady in relation to openings for data analysts.

During the first half of 2024, FAANG and Big Tech companies have regained their positions as key employers in the data science ecosystem.

The percentage of job openings in data science offered by high-paying FAANG and Big Tech companies has increased over the past year.

This is a change from last year’s trend, in which the share of job postings for FAANG and Big Tech decreased tenfold.

The number of job openings for FAANG and Big Tech companies skyrocketed year over year. Data engineer openings, in particular, rose 280% year over year as companies invested in data infrastructure in the context of the rise of AI.

FAANG and Big Tech job openings were even higher throughout last year.

While FAANG and Big Tech companies increased hiring, the total number of companies actively hiring in data science shrank year over year.

We checked the number of companies actively hiring each month by identifying companies with at least one interview reported on Glassdoor for a data-related position.

As we can see, these numbers tend to peak in July. However, the number of companies hiring for key positions dropped significantly from July 2023 to July 2024.

Together, the rise in job openings for Big Tech companies and the yearly drop in the number of companies conducting interviews seem to indicate that the data science job market is gravitating back toward FAANG.

Layoffs for June 2024 have dropped 10.2% month over month and 15.3% year over year.

Key developments in July layoffs

• Inuit cut 10% of their jobs, laying off 2200 workers. According to Bloomberg, the company wants to bring in fresh hires to sharpen its focus on products that use AI.
• Microsoft laid off an undisclosed number of workers. Microsoft’s fiscal year ends on June 30, so these layoffs are probably due to restructuring their business when beginning a new fiscal year.
• The AI startup Cohere laid off 20 employees last month, which accounts for 5% of their company workforce, after receiving $500 million in funding at a $5.5 billion valuation. They will continue to hire at a fast pace and currently have tens of open positions.
• UKG laid off 2100 workers, about 15% of their workforce. According to their CEO, Chris Todd, one reason for the restructuring is to focus on AI platforms that will transform the HR software market.
• Salesforce continued to downsize, cutting 300 new jobs in July. In May, Salesforce stock had dropped by 20% after missing revenue forecasts for the first time since 2006.

However, in the first days of August, we’ve seen a rise in layoffs of 130% month over month and 104% year over year.

We’ll see what this trend means in the future, but last year started with a lot of layoffs, and August began with a shock in the prices of key stocks that seems to have recovered in the past few days.