Dive Brief:

• Job satisfaction among data scientists is at an all time high, 88% of data scientists report they are either "happy" or "very happy" in their jobs, according to new data from CrowdFlower. The company surveyed 179 data scientists globally in a variety of industries.

• But what makes data scientists so happy? Some of it stems from the connection data scientists have to their work. More than six in 10 data scientists agree they have "this century's sexiest job." Others, however, did contend that working as a movie start, astronaut, beekeeper or rock star would be "sexier."  

• The tasks data scientists enjoy the most include building and modeling data, mining data for patterns and refining algorithms, CrowdFlower found. However, only 19% of data scientists said they spend most of their time on those preferred activities.

Dive Insight:

Data scientists are in huge demand, and in many cases, can write their own ticket to a job in their chosen industry at their chosen pay. Yet many say they don’t spend as much time as they’d like on the tasks that keep them the happiest.

IT leaders looking to keep their data scientists happy may want to consider how they can enable them to spend more time on the tasks they enjoy the most. In many cases that could mean allowing room for pet projects. 

Either way, it appears businesses are not going to stop needing data scientists anytime soon. The study found data scientists are looking at more data than ever before this year, the majority of which is unstructured. Companies need data scientists to make sense of that data and turn it into actionable information. Without someone to help make sense of the raw data, it can become wasted, just taking up room on a company's server.