A full 40 percent are finding it very difficult or impossible.. Against such scarcity, data scientists are priced at a premium. According to Glassdoor data, the median salary for data scientists in the United States is $117,500. By contrast, a business analyst can expect to make around $61,000 and a data analyst around $55,000. Gartner analyst Svetlana Sicular pokes fun at the whole category of data science, laughing that a data scientist is 1) a data analyst in California or 2) a statistician under 35..