ASA Connect

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  • 1.  Industry Salary Survey

    Posted 07-27-2019 21:52
    Why does the ASA not complete an annual industry or government salary survey similar to the academic one? It seems like this would be helpful for non-academic members.

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    Ryan Boch
    Senior Data Analyst
    Cerner
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  • 2.  RE: Industry Salary Survey

    Posted 07-29-2019 09:25
    I am NOT answering for the ASA, but I can think of several reasons. The first reason would be how much salaries differ from industry to industry. Secondly, there are so many different ways to use statisticians in business, for example Data Scientist vs. Analyst vs. Senior Technical Advisor, etc. How much risk is involved in the job? I worked for a company designing models of the energy industry, so they could buy or sell futures; potential high risk. Next to consider, how "hot" are different companies to have a statistician working for them? Some companies that I've interviewed weren't that interested, but now some companies feel like they can't live without a Data Scientist.
    That's all in business. As for government, are we talking Federal, State, or local? Some small city may very well have need of a statistician, but maybe they don't have the taxes to pay for them. I'm not sure. I've never worked in government.
    Anyway, I imagine getting salary information is much easier for statisticians in academic roles.
    Again, these are just guesses on my part.

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    Jessica Walls
    Northwest Analytics, Inc.
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  • 3.  RE: Industry Salary Survey

    Posted 07-30-2019 09:09
    ASA does report industry salaries. Here is the link:
    https://www.amstat.org/ASA/Your-Career/Salary-Information.aspx

    Regards,

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    Yolanda Munoz Maldonado, PhD
    Owner and Statistician
    Statistical Savvy Consulting LLC
    4500 Williams Dr. Ste. 212-329
    Georgetown, TX 78633
    Phone: (512) 591-8727
    Statisticalsavvyconsulting.com
    yolanda.munoz@statisticalsavvyconsulting.com
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  • 4.  RE: Industry Salary Survey

    Posted 07-29-2019 09:25
    Indeed, a very good idea, I agree it would be very helpful. But probably each of these surveys on every industry should begin checking if that industry has his own survey. For example, in my area, there are some (more than one) conducted by societies, editors, magazines, etc. like the SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers). If not, it would fill a void and rend a service and information not only helpful but very necessary to the professionals in that area. If yes, ASA could put a touch of knowledge in elaboration, management, treatment and overall, interpretation of data. In both cases, the participation of ASA could provide a clear, irreproachable, impartial, third-party, fair, flawless quality of the process.

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    Alfredo Bernardis
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  • 5.  RE: Industry Salary Survey

    Posted 07-29-2019 09:40
    I apologize. I should have included that I think one would be very useful. I'm just not sure how detailed or helpful it would be.

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    Jessica Walls
    Northwest Analytics, Inc.
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  • 6.  RE: Industry Salary Survey

    Posted 08-01-2019 15:46
    Building on Alfredo Bernardis' comments regarding identifying existing salary surveys conducted by individual industries, which are readily available from other professional societies such as the American Institute of Chemical Engineers ( AIChE ), my specialisation area ... I really like the idea of some form of meta-survey compiled and endorsed by the ASA but assembled from other reliable sources.  This would potentially be a very valuable contribution to both members of the ASA and those of us with multiple professional affiliations.  As Alfredo says the value-added by ASA participation and endorsement would really enhance the quality and fitness for use of the final product.

    A final pitch of my own for reporting formats: 1) some simple graphical summaries of the distributions of salary would be very helpful, and 2) breakdown by earned degrees, and hopefully 3) some breakdown by statistical practise level on the organizational ladder, and 4) a breakdown of whether or not the job is primarily associated with computer intensive methods ( Big Data, neural networks, advanced computing technology ) or with the traditional practice of statistics with emphasis on methodology accepted and endorsed by the academic statistics community. 

    As a final thought, industrial salary data were recently published by the Wall Street Journal, giving a great sense of the range of salaries available in various industry sectors such as Gas/Oil, Pharmaceuticals, Manufacturing, Chemicals and others I don't recall.  It was very interesting to see how the range of salaries varied within these economic sectors, even though specific sub-disciplines-within-sector were all lumped together.

    Tom

    Thomas D. Sandry, PhD
    Industrial Statistical Consultant, Retired


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    Thomas Sandry
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  • 7.  RE: Industry Salary Survey

    Posted 07-29-2019 12:50
    Both good points. My thought is let's start with ASA members in industry and government and go from there rather than look at industry as a whole. That will at least narrow things down a bit. There are some non-academic salary surveys on the ASA website already, but the last one was done in 2015. The current one is breaking things down by education level, geographic location, type of employer (including Federal vs State/Local), etc.

    It looks like the 2015 one was done by Augusta University rather than the ASA so maybe it's more to do with the work effort.

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    Ryan Boch
    Senior Data Analyst
    Cerner
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  • 8.  RE: Industry Salary Survey

    Posted 07-30-2019 08:14
    Ryan:  Many statisticians in government have their salaries posted online, since it's public information.  So if you're ever federal job hunting you can just google that.

    Agree industry data might be interesting, but it's incredibly heterogeneous and summary statistics may not be very telling.  If you're job searching, the best thing to do is talk with a recruiter who specializes in jobs in our field.  He or She can probably tell you about what salary level to expect for different types of jobs.

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    Jason Connor
    ConfluenceStat, LLC
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  • 9.  RE: Industry Salary Survey

    Posted 07-31-2019 09:36
    Another perspective on this is that posting summaries of statistician salaries for MS or PhD staff at academic institutions and statisticians in industry would be incredibly helpful for people like me who lead a lab and are trying to work with our chairs and people higher up to positively influence statistician salaries. It's very difficult without some evidence. The salary survey is useful for me in pushing my salary compared to my peers, but there's little to no information on salaries that are comparable to the MS-level staff I hire.
    thanks, Doug

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    Douglas Landsittel
    Professor of Biomedical Informatics
    University of Pittsburgh
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  • 10.  RE: Industry Salary Survey

    Posted 08-05-2019 17:25
    Douglas:
    You can always use:
       https://h1bdata.info/index.php
       https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/biostatistician-i-salary/
    ; and some states publish salaries of public universities
    ---
    Cruz
    ---.

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    Cruz Velasco
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