If you want to earn six figures while working from home, you might want to consider a career in data analytics.

Data analysts collect, organize and interpret raw data to better understand how a business is performing. They use tools like Excel, SQL and Tableau to identify trends and create visualizations, and look at metrics like sales, website traffic and regulatory risks, to help organizations work smarter.

The job "drives so much," in terms of business operations, Vicki Salemi, career expert at Monster, tells CNBC Make It. 

Data analytics is a rapidly growing field that can offer competitive salaries, strong job security, and flexibility, says Lisa Gevelber, a vice president at Google and the founder of the company's online training program, Grow With Google.

As businesses increasingly rely on data to drive decisions — from optimizing workflows to predicting customer behavior — the demand for skilled data analysts has increased. Data analytics was one of the most sought-after skills this year, according to a June 2024 report from freelance marketplace Upwork.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the number of data analytics and science jobs will grow at least 30% in the next decade — more than three times faster than the average for all other occupations.

On Google, searches for "data analytics skills" and "data analytics jobs" have hit a five-year high in 2024. There are currently close to 300,000 unfilled data analytics jobs in the U.S., Gevelber added.

Here's how to land a job in data analytics — and where to find the best opportunities:

Getting into data analytics without a degree

Companies are increasingly hiring data analysts without bachelor's degrees amid a labor shortage in the field.

Most data analytics jobs require at least a high school diploma or GED, as well as the completion of an online certification or training. Google, for example, offers a $49/month data analytics certificate as part of Grow with Google. Organizations like IBM and CompTIA also have comparable courses.

Data analysts should be adept at working with spreadsheets and coding languages, visualizing and presenting data findings, and, above all, problem-solving, says Gevelber.

She also recommends learning how to use artificial intelligence (AI) to clean and structure data, write code and brainstorm ideas for data visualizations

Candidates who can do that will have "a huge leg up in the job search," Gevelber added. "There's a lot of people in the data analytics field that haven't figured out how to do that yet, but it can make you so much more productive in this kind of highly technical job."

Six-figure salaries and remote opportunities

Data analysts are needed across all industries, but there's a strong demand for talent in the manufacturing, health care, tech and finance fields, according to recent research from Lightcast. 

Other popular data analytics roles are business systems analyst, data architect and database administrator.

The median pay for entry-level data analytics jobs is about $93,000, according to Google's data analytics career certificate page. More experienced data analysts, however, are pulling in a median salary of $110,000 according to Glassdoor.

Recent searches on Indeed and ZipRecruiter reveal dozens of open remote data analyst positions, some of which pay upwards of $150,000 a year.

"It doesn't matter what part of the world you live in or what industry you'd like to work in," says Gevelber. "The demand for people who understand data and who can make sense of it and use it to guide important business decisions is huge. Everybody needs data analysts."

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