Data Scientist Salary: What the Government Wage Data Shows for Every Pay Level

The BLS data scientist salary for May 2025 is a median of $120,230 a year, or $57.80 an hour. Half of data scientists earn less and half earn more. The middle half falls between $85,660 and $158,880. Your own number depends on your state, your employer and where you are in your career.

What Is the Median Data Scientist Salary?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 262,440 data scientists in May 2025. Their national figures are below.

• Median annual wage: $120,230 ($57.80 an hour).
• Mean annual wage: $126,800 ($60.96 an hour).
• 10th percentile: $67,240.
• 25th percentile: $85,660.
• 75th percentile: $158,880.
• 90th percentile: $199,130.

The mean sits $6,570 above the median. That gap tells you a group of high earners pulls the average up, so the median is the safer number to compare against your own offer.

If you are weighing this job against a role in the same field, our data scientist career page covers the work and the degrees behind it.

How Wide Is the Pay Range?

The spread is large. The 90th percentile is $131,890 above the 10th. The lowest tenth of data scientists earn $67,240 or less, and the highest tenth earn $199,130 or more.

BLS does not split these figures by years of experience, so we will not invent year bands. The percentiles are the honest way to read experience. Newer workers cluster toward the low end and experienced ones toward the high end, but the survey does not label which is which.

The middle matters most for planning. A quarter of data scientists earn $85,660 or less. A quarter earn $158,880 or more. The other half sit between them, and the median is $120,230.

What Moves Data Scientist Pay?

Two things show up clearly in the federal data. Two others do not.

State. This is the biggest lever we can measure. Washington’s median is $163,350 and Mississippi’s is $69,490. That is a gap of $93,860 for the same occupation.

Where you sit in the range. The 90th percentile is almost three times the 10th. Moving up that ladder usually means more responsibility, more complex models and more say over decisions.

Employer and title. BLS does not report pay by employer or by job title inside the occupation, so we cannot give you a number. A job called “machine learning engineer” falls under the same BLS occupation. Our machine learning engineer salary page uses the same data from the building side.

Degree. BLS does not report pay by degree either, so we do not claim a master’s adds a fixed amount.

Which States Pay Data Scientists the Most?

Median annual pay in the highest-paying states is below, with the number of data scientists BLS counted there.

• Washington: median $163,350, 9,600 data scientists.
• California: median $141,590, 39,310 data scientists.
• Maryland: median $136,370, 3,340 data scientists.
• New Jersey: median $135,280, 6,430 data scientists.
• Massachusetts: median $131,750, 9,420 data scientists.
• New York: median $130,460, 23,970 data scientists.
• Minnesota: median $128,800, 4,020 data scientists.
• District of Columbia: median $126,490, 2,680 data scientists.
• Virginia: median $126,430, 8,920 data scientists.
• Connecticut: median $126,340, 1,760 data scientists.

Vermont’s median is $127,070, but it has only 200 data scientists, so a handful of salaries can move the figure.

The employment column tells you where the jobs are. California has the most, followed by Texas with 25,860, New York with 23,970, Pennsylvania with 13,810 and North Carolina with 11,430.

Texas has a median of $122,090, close to the national figure. Pennsylvania’s is $106,850 and North Carolina’s is $119,090.

Which States Pay the Least?

The lowest medians are in Mississippi at $69,490, Louisiana at $78,760, North Dakota at $81,900, Alaska at $84,110 and West Virginia at $85,090.

These are also small markets. Mississippi has 440 data scientists and Louisiana has 1,300.

A low state median does not always mean a bad deal, because living costs differ. BLS does not adjust for that, and neither do we.

The state table on this page lists every state with its percentile ranges.

What Does the Range Look Like Inside One State?

A state median hides a wide spread. In Washington, the 10th percentile is $79,930, the median is $163,350 and the 90th percentile is $220,040. Even Washington’s 10th percentile is above the national 10th percentile of $67,240.

California runs from $77,480 at the 10th percentile to $224,920 at the 90th, with a median of $141,590. A quarter of California data scientists earn $186,820 or more.

Texas is flatter. Its 10th percentile is $64,540, its median is $122,090 and its 90th percentile is $170,780.

The lesson is that a state median is a midpoint, not a promise. In a high-paying state a newer worker may still earn less than the median, and in a lower-paying state an experienced one may earn far more.

How Should You Read These Numbers Against an Offer?

Find the state first, then find where the offer lands in that state’s range. An offer at the Washington median of $163,350 is a strong offer nationally, but it is ordinary for Washington.

Next, check the offer against the national percentiles. An offer under $85,660 is in the lowest quarter nationally, and one over $158,880 is in the highest quarter.

Last, ask what is in the number. Base pay, bonus and equity are different things, and the BLS wage figures are for wages, so compare like with like.

What Is the Hourly Pay?

BLS also reports hourly wages, which help if you are comparing a contract or part-time offer. The national median is $57.80 an hour and the mean is $60.96.

California’s median is $68.07 an hour and Washington’s is $78.54. Mississippi’s median is $33.41 an hour, and Louisiana’s is $37.86.

Hourly figures here are the same wages divided by hours worked in a year, so they do not include benefits. If you are weighing a contract, remember that you will pay for your own health coverage and time off.

Why Do Job Boards Show Different Numbers?

You will find other data scientist salary figures online, and they often run higher than BLS. They come from job postings or self-reported surveys, which skew toward people who changed jobs recently and toward large employers in expensive cities.

The BLS survey asks employers to report what they pay and covers every state, so it is slower and less flashy. It is also the only source here we can cite line by line, which is why we use it.

If a posting offers far more than the 90th percentile of $199,130, ask what the job includes. Equity, bonuses and a senior title can explain it, and so can a role that is not really a data scientist job.

How Much Is That per Month?

A median of $120,230 works out to about $10,019 a month before taxes. That number helps in the next section, where we compare tuition with pay.

The lowest tenth earns about $5,603 a month and the highest tenth about $16,594 a month. Both are gross figures, so your take-home depends on your tax situation and benefits.

What Does an Online AI Degree Cost Next to These Wages?

Price a degree against the pay for the job you want, not against a headline number. These are total tuition figures from our program data.

• The University of Texas at Austin’s online MS in Artificial Intelligence totals $9,990 for 30 credits. That is less than one month of the median data scientist’s gross pay.
• The University of Colorado Boulder’s online MS in Artificial Intelligence totals $15,750, about a month and a half of median gross pay.
• Purdue’s online MS in Artificial Intelligence totals $28,500 for 30 credits at $950 a credit, tuition only.
• The University of Cincinnati’s MS in Artificial Intelligence Management totals $34,800, with a Data Analytics concentration.
• Columbia’s online master’s is the most expensive on our list at $81,000, a bit over eight months of median gross pay.

For a bachelor’s, Dakota State University’s BS in Artificial Intelligence totals $44,856 for 120 credits before fees. Dakota State’s price is about four and a half months of median gross pay.

Sort the options yourself on our cheapest online AI degrees list. For depth, compare the online master’s in artificial intelligence and the online machine learning degrees.

How Do You Decide If the Degree Is Worth It?

Tuition is only half the math. The other half is what you would earn without the degree and what you could earn with it.

BLS lists a bachelor’s degree as the typical entry education for data scientists, so you may not need a graduate degree at all. If you already have a bachelor’s in a quantitative field, the cheapest path may be building projects and applying.

A master’s makes more sense if your bachelor’s was in another field and you need a structured way to learn programming and modeling. Several online AI master’s accept applicants from any major.

Do the sum with your own numbers. Take the program’s total, add lost income if you will cut hours, and compare it with the pay gap between your current job and the percentile you expect to land in. We cannot promise a raise, and BLS cannot either.

Our guide to whether an AI degree is worth it walks through that comparison.

How Does This Compare With Other AI Jobs?

BLS tracks neighboring occupations too. In May 2025, the median was $140,300 for computer and information research scientists and $135,980 for software developers.

Data scientists sit lower at the median, at $120,230, but the occupation is much larger and the projected growth is faster. BLS expects 35 percent growth for data scientists, against 22 percent for research scientists and 10 percent for software developers.

Those jobs are not interchangeable. Research scientist roles typically start with a master’s, and software developer roles ask for different skills. See our AI engineer salary page for that comparison.

Is Demand Strong Enough to Support These Wages?

BLS projects data scientist employment to grow 35 percent from 2025 to 2035, which it describes as much faster than the average for all occupations. That is about 95,400 more jobs on a base of 275,600 in 2025.

It also expects about 24,800 openings a year. Those include replacements for people who leave the occupation, so they are not all new positions.

Strong growth does not mean every new graduate gets an offer. Entry-level postings can draw many applicants, and pay at the bottom of the range reflects that.

What Should You Do Next?

Start with the number that fits your situation, not the national median. If you plan to work in Washington or California, the median is far above the national one. If you plan to work in a lower-paying state, expect to see fewer high-end offers unless the job is remote and pays by a national band.

Then price the degree. Pick two or three programs from the lists above, write down total tuition, and compare each with a few months of median pay.

Last, read the data scientist jobs page for the day-to-day work, the skills employers look for and the steps to getting hired.