Data Analyst Salary in Boston (May 2025 BLS)

Data Analyst Jobs and Salaries in Boston (May 2025 BLS Data)

Dan Patiño

· AI Strategy & Innovation at Coderhouse

Salary sites will tell you what a data analyst earns in Boston. What they rarely tell you is how many such jobs exist, or what the bottom of the range looks like. Here both: about 7,930 roles, a median of $132,040, and a 10th percentile of $82,030. Everything below comes from the BLS OEWS May 2025 release.

Median salary

$132,040

Entry level (10th pct)

$82,030

Concentration (LQ)

1.74

How big is the data job market in Boston?

The Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH area accounts for about 7,930 of the 275,600 data scientist positions in the country, or 2.9%, which ranks it 8th among the 25 metros here. National growth is projected at 35%.

What do data analysts earn in Boston?

$132,040 is the local median, 10% above the national median of $120,230. The 25th and 75th percentiles, $102,720 and $166,120, bracket the middle half of the market; $206,220 marks the top decile and $137,030 the average.

What can you expect to earn starting out in Boston?

If you are planning a career change, plan against $82,030, the local 10th percentile, rather than $132,040. The national equivalent is $67,240. The median describes someone already several years into the work.

Is Boston actually a data hub?

The location quotient for data scientists in Boston is 1.74, meaning the occupation is noticeably more concentrated here than nationally. In practice, this is a genuine hub, not just a large city with a lot of jobs in it. This is the number most salary sites leave out, and it is often more decisive than pay: a metro can post a high median while employing very few people in the role, which means strong salaries and a thin job market.

What about AI engineering roles in Boston?

The BLS has no occupation code for AI engineer. The closest published proxy is Software Developers (15-1252), which in Boston employs about 42,310 people at a median of $166,090, 22% above the national median of $135,980. The 10th percentile is $102,950 and the 90th is $214,100. Read it as the surrounding band for applied AI work rather than as a figure for the role itself, since AI engineers are distributed across several codes.

10th percentile

$82,030

25th percentile

$102,720

Median

$132,040

Mean

$137,030

75th percentile

$166,120

90th percentile

$206,220

vs national median

10% above the national median

Software developers · median

$166,090

How to get started from Boston

The course is remote and live, so Boston is irrelevant to whether you can take it. Eleven weeks, one live class a week, 6 to 8 hours of practice between them, $595 at launch price, covering the SQL, Python, statistics and experimentation stack. No job guarantee attached.

AI Engineering

8 weeks · live online

Build AI systems you can explain, evaluate, and improve—not just demos that happen to call an LLM. Work hands-on with retrieval, RAG, tool use, agents, evals, observability, and deployment while learning the engineering judgment behind reliable AI applications.

See Dates

$595

Data Analytics

11 weeks · live online

Learn to turn data into decisions—not just dashboards. Build practical skills in SQL, Python, metrics, statistics, experimentation, visualization, and AI-assisted analysis, with live feedback from practitioners who do this work professionally.

See dates

$595

Frequently asked questions

How much do data analysts make in Boston?

The median for the closest BLS occupation, data scientists, is $132,040 a year in the Boston metro area as of May 2025. The range runs from $82,030 at the 10th percentile to $206,220 at the 90th.

How many data jobs are there in Boston?

About 7,930 positions under SOC 15-2051, which is 1.74 times the national concentration per worker. That ratio tells you whether the market is deep or just large.

Is Boston a good place to start a data career?

On the data: pay is 10% above the national median and the occupation is noticeably more concentrated here than nationally. The entry reference point is $82,030. Weigh both together, since a high median in a thin market is harder to break into than a moderate median in a dense one.

What is the entry-level data analyst salary in Boston?

BLS does not publish by experience level. The 10th percentile, $82,030, is the best available proxy for early-career pay, against $67,240 nationally.

Do I need to live in Boston to work in data?

Not necessarily, and remote roles widen the market considerably. These figures measure where the job is located rather than where the worker lives, so a remote role at a Boston employer would still appear in this metro's count.

Where these numbers come from

All figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, May 2025 release, for the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area. BLS does not publish a 'data analyst' occupation; the figures above use Data Scientists (SOC 15-2051), the closest published match, and Software Developers (SOC 15-1252) as the proxy for AI engineering roles. OEWS estimates are built from six semiannual panels collected over three years, so they are stable but lag fast-moving pay changes. Wages cover base pay and exclude equity and bonuses, which understates total compensation at large technology employers.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025