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What Can You Do With a Statistics Degree? Jobs & Salaries (2026)
Key takeaway: A statistics degree leads to three well-defined occupations: actuary at a median annual wage of $130,000, data scientist at $120,230, and statistician at $105,650 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 OEWS national medians). The actuarial path is gated by a professional exam sequence rather than by degree level, while statistician roles commonly expect a master's.
Statistics is the discipline of drawing defensible conclusions from incomplete information, which is why it ends up embedded in so many industries: pharmaceutical trials, insurance pricing, government measurement, manufacturing quality, and every technology company running experiments. Unlike broader analytics majors, a statistics degree is built on mathematical foundations, probability theory, inference, and experimental design, and employers hire it specifically for that rigor.
Jobs you can get with a statistics degree
| Occupation | Median annual wage |
|---|---|
| Actuary | $130,000 |
| Data scientist | $120,230 |
| Statistician | $105,650 |
View the data behind this chart
| Occupation | Avg. annual openings |
|---|---|
| Data Scientist | 23,400/yr |
| Actuary | 2,400/yr |
| Statistician | 2,000/yr |
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 OEWS national medians. Median means half of workers in the occupation earned more and half earned less; pay varies substantially by industry and by how many actuarial exams a candidate has passed.
Actuary. Actuaries quantify financial risk, mostly for insurers and pension plans. The work involves building models of mortality, morbidity, claims frequency and severity, or catastrophe exposure; setting premium rates and reserve levels; testing capital adequacy; and writing the technical documentation that regulators and auditors review. It is a heavily regulated technical profession, and pay is closely tied to exam progress.
Data scientist. Data scientists frame a question, build the dataset, choose a modeling approach, validate the result, and communicate what it does and does not support. Statistics graduates tend to be strong on the parts of the job that separate a real answer from a plausible one: sampling, confounding, causal inference, and honest uncertainty. The gap most need to close is engineering, meaning production code, data pipelines, and version control.
Statistician. Statisticians design studies and analyze their results in settings where the conclusion carries consequences: clinical trial design and analysis at pharmaceutical companies and research hospitals, official measurement at federal statistical agencies, survey methodology, quality and reliability engineering in manufacturing, and analysis in academic research groups. Biostatistics is the single largest specialty destination.
What the degree level changes
Statistics has an unusual credential structure, so it is worth being precise about each path.
The actuarial route is not gated by degree level at all. Entry-level actuarial analyst positions hire bachelor’s graduates who have passed one or two of the professional preliminary examinations administered by the Society of Actuaries or the Casualty Actuarial Society. Full credentialing as an Associate and then a Fellow takes several more years of exams typically completed while working. If you plan on this path, exam progress matters more than any graduate degree, and starting exams during the online bachelor’s in statistics is the standard advice.
Data scientist positions frequently ask for a master’s degree or equivalent applied experience, though a bachelor’s plus a portfolio of end-to-end projects and real programming ability does get people hired, especially into analyst titles that convert upward.
The statistician title is where a graduate degree matters most. Biostatistics and federal statistical positions, and most roles that involve designing studies rather than analyzing someone else’s data, generally expect a master’s, and pharmaceutical and research-group leadership often expects a doctorate. The online master’s in statistics is the standard credential for that track. None of these occupations require a state license.
Common questions
What jobs can you get with a statistics degree?
The three occupations most closely tied to the major are actuary, data scientist, and statistician. Graduates work in insurance, pharmaceuticals and clinical research, federal and state statistical agencies, technology companies, manufacturing quality groups, and academic research.
How much do statistics majors make?
Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 OEWS national medians are $130,000 for actuaries, $120,230 for data scientists, and $105,650 for statisticians. Actuarial pay in particular rises with each professional exam passed, so early-career figures sit below that median.
Do you need a master’s degree?
It depends on the path. Actuarial careers are built on professional exams and start with a bachelor’s. Data scientist roles often prefer a master’s but hire bachelor’s graduates with strong applied portfolios. Statistician titles, especially in biostatistics and government, generally expect a master’s or higher.
What is the difference between a statistician and a data scientist?
Statisticians typically design the study and defend the inference, working where methodological correctness is the deliverable. Data scientists more often work with data that already exists, build predictive models, and ship them into products, which makes programming and engineering skill a bigger part of the job.
Is a statistics degree worth it?
It is one of the more directly employable quantitative majors, with three distinct well-paid destinations and demand across unrelated industries. The is a statistics degree worth it page compares that against program cost and against related majors like data analytics.
Keep exploring
- Start at the statistics program hub, then compare levels: online bachelor’s in statistics and online master’s in statistics.
- Weigh the trade-offs on is it worth it, or find programs near you at the state index.
- Compare related fields: data analytics, machine learning, and economics.
Data verified: August 12, 2026. Salary, employment, and tuition figures on this page are sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS May 2025; Employment Projections 2024–2034) and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard (2023 cohort). The source agency and data year are cited inline with every statistic.
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