Business Analyst vs Data Analyst: which job are you applying to?

Business Analyst and Data Analyst are not two rungs on one ladder. They sit in different federal occupation codes, and BLS's May 2025 estimates put those codes $18,370 apart: $101,860 for Management Analysts (13-1111), where "Business Analyst" is a reported job title, against $120,230 for Data Scientists (15-2051), the code O*NET ranks first when you search for "data analyst". The rest of this post is about working out which code the posting in front of you belongs to, because the title at the top of it will not tell you.

Which occupation code is each title actually in?

O*NET publishes, for each occupation, the job titles employers report using for it. "Business Analyst" appears verbatim in two of those lists: Management Analysts (13-1111.00) and Business Intelligence Analysts (15-2051.01). A near-variant, "Business Systems Analyst", appears in a third - Computer Systems Analysts (15-1211.00). Search the same tool for "data analyst" and no title matches exactly; in September 2026 it returned 607 keyword matches and put Data Scientists (15-2051.00) at the top, Business Intelligence Analysts second.

One title in three codes. The other title in none of them, borrowing a code from a job with a different name.

The three codes a Business Analyst or Data Analyst posting lands in

BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook. Wages are May 2025 estimates; employment is 2025; growth and openings are the 2025–35 projections.

	Management Analysts 13-1111	Data Scientists 15-2051	Computer Systems Analysts 15-1211
Median annual wage	$101,860	$120,230	$105,850
Lowest 10 percent	$60,640	$67,240	$67,340
Highest 10 percent	$171,640	$199,130	$167,710
Employed, 2025	1,077,100	275,600	544,400
Projected growth, 2025–35	10%	35%	8%
Annual openings, 2025–35	94,100	24,800	32,900
Typical entry education	Bachelor's degree	Bachelor's degree	Bachelor's degree

How to read this: the median is the middle of the range, not the typical offer for a first job. Half of everyone in the code earns less. A Data Analyst starting out is far closer to the $67,240 tenth-percentile figure than to $120,230, and a Business Analyst fifteen years in with a portfolio of process work can sit above the $171,640 line for Management Analysts. The percentile columns are the useful part of that table; the median is the headline.

What this table is not: BLS does not price job titles. It prices occupation codes, and the employer's HR system decides which code a posting falls into when it is reported. Nobody publishes a median for "Business Analyst" as a phrase. City-level figures do exist - BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics tables for May 2025 break each code down to the metropolitan area - but they break down 13-1111 and 15-2051, not the two titles, so a metro number still requires you to decide which code you are in first.

What does each one do all day?

Here the codes stop overlapping. O*NET's core tasks for Management Analysts, the code carrying "Business Analyst", start with gathering and organizing information on problems or procedures, then conferring with personnel to make sure a newly implemented system functions, then documenting findings and preparing recommendations. That is a job about a process and the people inside it.

The core tasks for Business Intelligence Analysts, which also carries "Business Analyst", read differently: generate standard or custom reports summarizing business, financial or economic data; maintain or update business intelligence tools, databases, dashboards, systems or methods; provide technical support for existing reports and dashboards. That is a job about a pipeline.

And Data Scientists start further out again: analyze, manipulate or process large sets of data using statistical software; test, validate and reformulate models to ensure accurate prediction of outcomes; recommend data-driven solutions to key stakeholders.

So two postings can both say Business Analyst, and one of them wants you to interview twelve people in claims operations while the other wants you to keep a Power BI workspace alive. The tools list is the tell. O*NET's technology list for Management Analysts leads with Tableau, Power BI, Excel, SharePoint and JIRA. The list for Data Scientists leads with Python, R, SQL-adjacent stores like PostgreSQL and Snowflake, Spark, TensorFlow and PyTorch. A posting that names Python and Spark under the words "Business Analyst" is a data job wearing a cheaper title.

Does one of them need a master's degree?

Sometimes, and the gap is smaller than the internet suggests. O*NET asks people in the occupation what level of education was required for their job. Three codes, three answers:

Source: the Education section of each O*NET OnLine occupation summary, read September 2026. O*NET does not date these percentages on the page, so treat them as current-version rather than as an annual estimate. These are what incumbents reported was required, not what postings ask for, and the two are rarely the same document. BLS lists a bachelor's degree as the typical entry-level education for all three codes.

The line worth noticing is Data Scientists at 44 percent master's. That is the only one of the three where an advanced degree is close to a coin flip - and it is also the code with the highest median. If you are deciding between the two titles on money alone, the money is partly buying a second degree.

Which title is growing, and which one is hiring?

Those are different questions and they have different answers.

Data Scientists grow 35 percent from 2025 to 2035, against 10 percent for Management Analysts and 8 percent for Computer Systems Analysts. All occupations together grow 3 percent over the same period. On growth rate, it is not close.

On volume, it reverses. Management Analysts is projected to average 94,100 openings a year over that decade; Data Scientists, 24,800. A code four times larger produces more vacancies from replacement alone than a small fast-growing code produces from growth. If you are applying this month rather than planning a career for 2035, the Business Analyst side of the fence has roughly four times as many doors on it.

It is worth doing the arithmetic on those two BLS figures, because the growth number is the one people quote and the openings number is the one that decides whether you get hired. Management Analysts is projected to add 109,200 jobs between 2025 and 2035. Over the same ten years, at 94,100 openings a year, the code turns over something on the order of 941,000 positions. Almost all of the hiring in that occupation is people leaving jobs that already exist - retirements, moves into management, moves out of the field entirely - and not new headcount at all. A 10 percent growth rate reads as sleepy. It is not: it sits on top of a very large replacement flow, and a Business Analyst applying in 2026 is competing for a vacancy created by someone's resignation far more often than by a budget line.

Run the same division on the other code and it says something different. BLS expects Data Scientists to add 95,400 jobs between 2025 and 2035, against roughly 248,000 total openings over those ten years at 24,800 a year. So about two in five hires in that code fill a seat that did not exist before. In Management Analysts it is 109,200 new jobs against roughly 941,000 openings - closer to one in nine.

That is the difference worth carrying into an interview, and it is not the one the growth rates advertise. Data Scientists is a small code being built. Management Analysts is a large code being refilled. Both hire, and the larger one hires more people in absolute terms every single year of the projection. Only one of them is hiring mostly because the work is new, and that is what you are actually buying when you take the lower-volume title.

Where does "Business Systems Analyst" fit?

In a third code, with its own numbers. Computer Systems Analysts (15-1211) carries the reported titles Business Systems Analyst, Applications Analyst, IT Analyst and Programmer Analyst, and its core tasks are neither consulting nor modeling - they are troubleshooting program and system malfunctions, testing and monitoring programs, and coordinating systems so information can be shared across an organization.

BLS puts its May 2025 median at $105,850, between the other two, with 544,400 people employed and 32,900 projected openings a year. Its industry spread is the tightest of the three: $108,270 in computer systems design and related services down to $100,190 in government, a range of $8,080. That flatness is itself informative. A Business Systems Analyst who changes industry should not expect the move to pay for itself the way it might for a data scientist going from insurance to a content company.

Why does the same title pay differently?

Job titles are set by whoever wrote the req, and they are set for reasons that have nothing to do with the work - a pay band that already exists, a headcount plan approved last year, a hiring manager copying the last posting. The federal taxonomy is downstream of that noise, which is why "Business Analyst" ended up scattered across three codes with medians from $101,860 to $120,230.

The practical version: read four things before the title. The tools named. The verbs in the first three bullets - "gather", "confer" and "document" point at 13-1111; "maintain", "generate" and "validate" point at 15-2051. The team the role reports into. And the degree line, because a posting asking for a master's in statistics under a Business Analyst title has told you exactly which code it is really in.

How to place a posting in a code before you apply

1. 1
   Read the tools list

   Tableau, Excel, SharePoint and JIRA point at Management Analysts (13-1111). Python, R, Spark and PyTorch point at Data Scientists (15-2051).

2. 2
   Read the first three task bullets

   Gathering information, conferring with staff and documenting recommendations is 13-1111 work. Building reports, maintaining dashboards and validating models is 15-2051 work.

3. 3
   Check the degree line

   A master's asked for by name moves the posting toward 15-2051, where 44 percent of respondents said a master's was required.

4. 4
   Set your expected range from the code, not the title

   Use the percentile spread for the code you landed on - $60,640 to $171,640 for 13-1111, $67,240 to $199,130 for 15-2051 - and treat the median as the middle, not the offer.

Does industry matter more than the title?

Industry moves pay more than title does. Within Data Scientists, BLS's May 2025 medians run from $108,650 in insurance carriers to $142,240 in publishing, broadcasting and content providers - a $33,590 spread inside one occupation, nearly twice the $18,370 gap between the two codes people argue about.

Data Scientists: median annual wage by industry, May 2025

The spread inside one occupation code is wider than the gap between codes.

Publishing, broadcasting, content providers		$142,240
Computer systems design and related services		$132,380
Credit intermediation and related activities		$129,490
Management of companies and enterprises		$128,050
Insurance carriers and related activities		$108,650

The same is true on the other side, if less dramatically. Management Analysts median $107,330 in professional, scientific and technical services and $97,300 in government excluding education and hospitals - a $10,030 spread. A Business Analyst moving from a state agency to a consulting firm is making a bigger pay decision than a Business Analyst becoming a Data Analyst inside the same industry.

Which related titles should you also search?

If you search only the title on your last business card, you will miss most of the market. And O*NET's related-occupation lists are not symmetric, which is worth knowing before you trust them. Management Analysts (13-1111.00) lists Data Scientists as a related occupation. Data Scientists (15-2051.00) does not list Management Analysts back - its neighbours are Biostatisticians, Statisticians, Mathematicians and Computer and Information Research Scientists. The business side treats the data side as adjacent. The data side does not return the compliment.

What both lists do contain is Business Intelligence Analysts (15-2051.01) and Operations Research Analysts (15-2031.00), which is where the two halves actually meet. One step further out, in the Business Intelligence Analysts list, sits Market Research Analysts (13-1161): a $78,760 median in May 2025, 952,700 people employed, and about 82,000 openings a year. That is lower pay than any of the three codes in the table above, and more annual openings than Data Scientists and Computer Systems Analysts put together.

Search all of these: Business Analyst, Business Systems Analyst, Business Intelligence Analyst, Data Analyst, Reporting Analyst, Operations Analyst. Three of those - Business Analyst, Business Systems Analyst, Business Intelligence Analyst - come straight from O*NET's reported-title lists for the codes above, which means real employers have filed real postings under them. The other three are the ones the taxonomy has not caught up with. That gap between the taxonomy and the job board is why a Data Analyst has a harder time pricing their own work than a Business Analyst does: there is no federal page with your title on it, only a page with your work on it under someone else's name.

If you are applying for this role

Search the title variants, not the title. Run Business Analyst, Business Intelligence Analyst and Data Analyst as three separate saved searches. The reported-title lists show employers use them for overlapping work, so a single search hides a third of the market from you.

Set your range from the code you placed the posting in. For a Business Analyst posting that reads as 13-1111, the May 2025 spread is $60,640 to $171,640 with a $101,860 median. For a Data Analyst posting that reads as 15-2051, it is $67,240 to $199,130 with a $120,230 median. Name a number inside the right spread and be ready to say which industry you priced it against.

Ask one question in the screen: "which team owns the dashboards?" If the answer is your team, this is a 15-2051 job however it is titled, and the pay expectation moves accordingly. If the answer is a data team you file tickets with, it is a 13-1111 job and the interview will be about stakeholders.

Once you know which of the two you are chasing, the work is repetition - the same resume against three title variants across a lot of postings. HeroApply fills each application from your resume so the variant search costs you searches rather than evenings.