Big-Data Skills Earn High Pay For Today's College Graduates

(Bloomberg) -- The Class of 2019 is getting ready to enter one hot job market. And grads with a background in slicing and dicing data have an edge.

Data scientist was the highest-paying entry-level job last year, according to Glassdoor research. Young adults in this field earned a median annual base salary of $95,000. That’s higher than young Wall Street workers received as investment-banking analysts.

Businesses from fashion giants to hedge funds to venture capital firms are building teams focused on figuring out how to turn the information they capture into valuable insights.

“There’s such a high demand across industries for people with data-science skills,” said Amanda Stansell, senior research analyst at Glassdoor.

Recruitment for this profession will continue as more companies accumulate data and figure out what to to do with it, Stansell added.

Tech jobs dominated Glassdoor’s list of the top 25 highest-paying entry-level positions. Software engineer ranked second, with a median base salary of $90,000. The only non-technical and non-business profession on the list was physical therapists with a median salary of just under $64,000.

Job openings for the information-technology sector have increased more than 4% in the past year, according to the S&P 500 Link-up Jobs Index. During the same period, postings for the financial industry dropped 10%.

Coding boot camps have proliferated in recent years amid talk of a skills shortage, and some companies have worked to combat the gap by partnering with locals schools to provide mentorship and training.

Graduates looking to pursue one of these jobs don’t need to limit themselves geographically. In addition to the coastal tech hubs, several other cities offer unique tech opportunities, including Huntsville, Alabama, and Detroit, Michigan.