Market Overview

Prevalence of various sensors and smart devices enabled many companies to collect vast amount of data. Now it has come to the stage for such companies to be able to organize and analyze the collected data, in the hope of solving problems and bring about unprecedented knowledge or information to the companies. Currently, the personnel related with data analysis have drawn attention, among which data scientists are the most respected.

In such a condition, the environment surrounding the data-analysis related personnel has been improving: The legal system has about to be prepared for protecting and utilizing personal data as well as industrial data including trade secrets. From the educational point of view, short and mid-term reform has been in progress such as educational reform to generate good human resources at colleges and universities, as well as new educational policies hammered out at primary, secondary, and high schools.

With regard to businesses, some have embarked in organizing a data-analysis related team, starting with adopting mid-career professionals. However, the candidates qualified for the job are, all in all, very limited. Therefore, more companies have initiated educating and training their own science-oriented employees including system engineers through continuing education, aka *recurrent education.

Now that data scientists are high in demand yet difficult to acquire due to the rareness, causing their annual income to soar. This led some companies, regardless of whether IT or not, to look for new graduates. ​

*Recurrent education is the system to provide the opportunity of education and/or training for business people within or outside the company (often at some educational institutions like universities and other companies).

Noteworthy Topics

Proactive Education Taken Place to Train Data-Analysis related Personnel

IT businesses as well as analysis-specific businesses have launched various in-house education courses including some classes for “Python,” a programming language suitable for data analysis. Some enterprises especially analysis-specific businesses have initiated training services for external companies (mainly the user companies). Some companies even focused on educating data scientists in rural areas, aiming eventually for regional revitalization which can be achieved through a system to connect locally educated human resources with local SMEs. ​


On the other hand, more user companies including those in the manufacturing industry as well as the retailers tend to encourage their employees to take the educational courses such as “Education to be a Data Scientist” or “Decision Making based on the Companywide Data Analysis.” The former course is to learn Python and data modeling by using original sources or the training materials that analysis-specific businesses provide, and the latter course is mainly for on-site employees with occupational knowledge to learn the idea of data-based decision making throughout the company by using original simple data analysis.

Future Outlook

The number of data-analysis related personnel (i.e., data analysis consultants, data scientists, data analysis architects and project managers) is expected to reach 116,000 by FY2022. 


It is regarded that such personnel is likely to increase further, as more companies are needed to analyze data regardless of whether the companies have something to do with AI or IoT.


Currently, companies tend to find values in data analysis itself, including data modeling, but, gradually, more companies are expected to find importance at the planning phase of the data utilization strategy processes. Therefore, higher demand is expected in data analysis consultants.

Research Outline