LO
Data analyst — skills, knowledge and links
Where this job sits in the official classifications, what those classifications say it demands, and what it connects to. Every block names its source: our own judgements, the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET, or the U.S. Department of Education.
How it connects#
O*NET also lists (no page here yet): Statistical Assistants · Marketing Managers · Search Marketing Strategists · Financial Risk Specialists · Operations Research Analysts · Document Management Specialists · Clinical Data Managers · Bioinformatics Scientists
In the official classification#
Business Intelligence Analysts
Fit with this page: closest match, not the same job
Job Zone 4: considerable preparation
See it on O*NET OnLine ↗Data Scientists
Fit with this page: closest match, not the same job
Job Zone 4: considerable preparation
See it on O*NET OnLine ↗In Europe, internationally and in Singapore
Systems analysts
Fit with this page: broader than this page
Statistical officer/Data analyst
Fit with this page: same job
What O*NET rates highest#
From O*NET 15-2051.01 (Business Intelligence Analysts). Ordered by O*NET's importance rating; the words are O*NET's own scale anchors.
Transferable skills
- Judgment and Decision MakingVery important
- Complex Problem SolvingImportant
- Systems AnalysisImportant
- Systems EvaluationImportant
- Time ManagementImportant
- CoordinationImportant
- InstructingImportant
- Social PerceptivenessImportant
Knowledge
- Computers and ElectronicsVery important
- MathematicsVery important
- English LanguageVery important
- Administration and ManagementImportant
- Customer and Personal ServiceImportant
- Economics and AccountingImportant
Work activities
- Analyzing Data or InformationExtremely important
- Working with ComputersExtremely important
- Processing InformationExtremely important
- Interpreting the Meaning of Information for OthersExtremely important
- Getting InformationExtremely important
- Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or SubordinatesVery important
Abilities
- Oral ComprehensionVery important
- Written ComprehensionVery important
- Oral ExpressionVery important
- Written ExpressionVery important
- Inductive ReasoningVery important
- Deductive ReasoningVery important
Essential skills
- Reading ComprehensionVery important
- Active ListeningVery important
- SpeakingVery important
- Critical ThinkingVery important
- Active LearningVery important
Each task in O*NET's terms#
O*NET describes work as detailed activities. Each of this page's 5 tasks is matched only against the activities O*NET lists for this occupation, with a stated fit; 4 match at least one. 1 are work O*NET does not describe yet. The alignment and its fit are this site's judgement, made task by task by its AI agent (Claude) on 2026-09-26; O*NET does not align tasks like ours. The activity names are O*NET's, the translations ours.
- Writing queries and building dashboardsWrite computer programming code.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Working with Computers · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Data scientist · GIS analystPrepare graphics or other visual representations of information.covers part of this task · Thinking Creatively · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Data scientist · GIS analyst
- Working out what is really being askedDetermine appropriate methods for data analysis.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Making Decisions and Solving Problems · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Data scientist · Statistician
- Knowing when the data is lyingPrepare data for analysis.the closest O*NET has, not the same · Working with Computers · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Data scientist · Statistician · Machine learning engineer
- Making a number change a decisionPresent research results to others.the same activity · Documenting/Recording Information · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Data scientist · Statistician
- Owning the definitions the tools rely onO*NET's activity lists do not describe this work yet. This site judges it to be emerging work.
Tasks O*NET proposes to add#
O*NET's analysts propose new or reworded task statements for future data collection, drawing on what surveyed workers write in, research into new technologies and professional associations. They are candidates, not yet part of the rated task list, and they say nothing about whether automation is involved. This site does not fold them into its own task judgements.
- Interview stakeholders to identify questions or problems to address through data analysis.New task · 2026-08 · from occupational experts · O*NET 31.0
Our task judgements#
O*NET says what this job demands. It does not say what automation is doing to it — that is what this site's 5 task judgements are for: 5 backed by a verified event, 0 platform inference. VOLO judgement
Sources and rules#
- Each block says where it comes from: this site's own judgements, O*NET, the U.S. Department of Education's CIP–SOC crosswalk, the European ESCO classification and its official crosswalk to O*NET, the ILO's ISCO-08, Singapore's SSOC 2024, or something computed mechanically from those. Nothing on this page is a rating we made up.
- O*NET's importance ratings are used only to order and shorten the lists. They are never combined with this site's impact index or evidence counts.
- The fit between our page and an O*NET occupation is our judgement and is stated per code: same job, broader, part of it, or only the closest there is.
- The ESCO and ISCO-08 fits are derived mechanically from the official ESCO–O*NET crosswalk; where we override it, we say why in our data (for example, the crosswalk pairs radiologists with radiographers, which is a different job). The SSOC 2024 fit is our reading of the Singapore Department of Statistics' own titles and definitions. Official names are shown as their publishers write them; we do not translate them.
- Each task is matched only against the detailed work activities O*NET lists for the codes this page maps to. Where nothing fits, the page says why instead of forcing a match: work O*NET does not describe yet (used only for tasks we judge to be emerging), or nothing in O*NET's list for this occupation. An alignment never changes a task's direction, its basis or the impact index.
- Rules are read only from this site's verified records. A rule's official name must appear word for word in a record that reads it, so no name is made up; a policy mandate is read only as 'must', 'must not' or 'funds', because 'should' and 'in principle' are not a mandate. Reading a rule never changes a task's direction, its basis or the impact index.
- How these pieces fit together — objects, links and the actions that change them — is drawn as one diagram: The VOLO ontology
- ESCO (European Commission), occupation records from the ESCO API; CC BY 4.0. ESCO–O*NET crosswalk, ESCO Secretariat with the U.S. Department of Labor/ETA, version 1 (Sep 2022), O*NET-SOC 2019 ↔ ESCO v1.1.0; CC BY 4.0. Singapore Department of Statistics, Singapore Standard Occupational Classification 2024 and its correspondence with ISCO-08.
- O*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026 release, U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration, CC BY 4.0. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. The translations of O*NET descriptors on this page are ours, not O*NET's.