Is Data, Analytics & AI a Good Job Market in Salt Lake City-Murray, UT?

Executive Verdict

Market rating: competitive | Confidence: High

Salt Lake City is still a real market for Data, Analytics & AI, but it is not an easy one right now: local unemployment was 3.6% in June 2026, metro nonfarm employment was up 2.7291% year over year, and Professional and Business Services grew 6.0668% even as Information fell 4.2194%.[26][27][14][15] For the field itself, Utah-wide signals from Revelio Public Labor Statistics show Data, Analytics & AI postings up 7.9% year over year in July 2026 while employment in the field slipped 0.9%.[12][13] The local posting mix also skews experienced, with about 55% mid-level, about 25% senior, and only about 20% entry-level roles.[1]

Best positioned: Candidates with 2-5 years of Python, SQL, and dashboard experience plus business-domain fluency in healthcare, finance, or RevOps have the best odds right now.[4][2][7]

Main caution: The biggest mistake is assuming this is a remote-first AI boom market: only about 15% of the local posting sample was remote, and many openings sit in business teams rather than pure tech employers.[6][14][15]

What Changed Recently

• Salt Lake City's Professional and Business Services sector grew 6.0668% year over year in June 2026, while local Information employment fell 4.2194%.[14][15]: That pushes the better odds toward analytics roles embedded in operations, consulting, healthcare, finance, and internal decision support rather than pure tech-product teams.
• Utah Data, Analytics & AI postings were up 7.9% year over year in July 2026 even though statewide employment in the field was down 0.9%, according to Revelio Public Labor Statistics.[12][13]: Openings exist, but many employers appear to be hiring narrowly for specific gaps instead of building large new teams.
• The local role mix stayed experience-heavy: about 55% of postings were mid-level, about 25% senior, and about 20% entry-level, with only about 15% remote.[1][6]: Early-career candidates need a tighter niche and better proof of execution than they would in a looser market.
• Nationally, the job openings rate was 4.4% in June 2026 while total nonfarm payrolls were up only 0.1993% year over year in July 2026.[11][10]: That macro backdrop supports selective hiring, so Salt Lake applicants should expect slower funnels and more side-by-side comparison against experienced candidates.
• Utah's HB 418 changes to the Utah Consumer Privacy Act took effect on July 1, 2026, adding correction rights and new portability and interoperability requirements in some social media contexts.[16][17]: Data quality, governance, and privacy-aware analytics are more marketable now than 'model building' alone.

What This Means for You

Entry-Level Candidates

Difficulty: Harder than average; only about 20% of the local posting mix is entry-level.[1]

Best target: Aim for business-facing analyst work in healthcare, finance, operations, or contract data-cleanup and governance roles where SQL, Python, and dashboards matter more than advanced ML.[2][3][4]

Biggest mistake: Applying as a generalist to every 'AI' title without proof you can ship SQL, Python, and reporting work.[4][5]

Next step: Build two portfolio pieces in the next month: one dashboard case in Tableau or Power BI and one Python/SQL data-quality project tied to a business KPI.[4]

Mid-Career Candidates

Difficulty: Manageable but competitive; the market is built much more for mid-level hires than true beginners.[1]

Best target: Target hybrid roles on business teams that need analytics plus domain judgment, especially in healthcare, banking, RevOps, and internal operations.[6][2][7]

Biggest mistake: Insisting on remote-only searches when only about 15% of the local posting sample is remote.[6]

Next step: Rewrite your resume around outcomes, not tools alone: forecast accuracy improved, vendor data cleaned, patient access reduced, pipeline conversion raised.

Career Switchers

Difficulty: Moderate to hard; career changers can land interviews, but employers are screening for domain credibility and some hands-on analytics experience.[2][8]

Best target: Use your prior industry as the wedge: healthcare operators should aim at care-delivery analytics, finance candidates at banking and risk reporting, and sales ops candidates at RevOps-style roles.[2][7]

Biggest mistake: Leading with certificates instead of work samples; local postings rarely require certifications, and bachelor's degrees are still the most common stated requirement where one is listed.[9][8]

Next step: Turn past work into quantified case studies that show you already made business decisions with data, even if your old title was not 'analyst.'

Salary Reality

high pay highly concentrated

Official local pay data is strongest for data scientists: the May 2024 metro median was $108,950 and the 25th percentile was $75,490.[31] Current local posting data across the broader category centers on about $91k to $136k, while recent data-analyst-specific proxies range from about $53,083-$97,248 in local estimates to $43.54-$50.41 per hour on a Salt Lake contract posting and $39.97-$62.91 per hour on an Intermountain Healthcare opening.[22][23][3][2]

This is a solid-paying market by Utah standards, especially because Utah Data, Analytics & AI openings show a mean offered salary of about $104,220 on new postings versus about $69,221 across all Utah openings.[32]

The upside is offset by selectivity: only about 20% of the local posting mix is entry-level, only about 15% is remote, and the metro cost-of-living index is 105.[1][6][33]

Best-paying path: The strongest pay tends to sit in data scientist or AI-heavy work, with the official local data scientist median at $108,950, category-wide posted ranges centered at about $91k to $136k, and a local Salesforce Data Analyst estimate at $103,000 with a $74k-$142k range for specialized platform analytics.[31][22][30]

Caution: Do not read top-end figures as typical: some numbers come from individual postings, salary aggregators, or specialized sub-roles, and the official metro wage benchmark for this category is lagged to May 2024.[2][3][23][30][31]

Where the Opportunities Are Concentrated

Real opportunity exists, but it is spread across a long tail rather than a few giant hiring engines: the local posting sample shows more than 40 postings across more than 30 companies over the last 90 days.[29] The most consistently active named employers were RevOps Advisor, Zions Bancorporation, and Utah, each with around 5 postings in the sample.[7] The stronger submarkets appear to be business-facing analytics homes. Salt Lake City's Professional and Business Services employment was up 6.0668% year over year in June 2026, and Intermountain Healthcare also posted a Murray telehealth data analyst opening, while local Information employment was down 4.2194%.[14][2][15] That mix suggests better odds in operational analytics, healthcare analytics, banking and risk analytics, and internal reporting work than in pure product analytics at shrinking tech employers. The Wasatch Front tech brands still matter—Qualtrics, Domo, Pluralsight, and Lucid Software remain prominent local employers—but they should be treated as one lane in the market, not the whole market.[18]

• Business and operations analytics (high): The healthiest local backdrop is in business-facing teams, supported by 6.0668% year-over-year growth in Professional and Business Services and active employer signals from RevOps Advisor, Zions Bancorporation, and Utah.[14][7]
• Healthcare analytics (moderate): Intermountain Healthcare posted a Murray telehealth data analyst role, pointing to demand for analytics tied to care delivery, access, and operational improvement.[2]
• Enterprise tech and product analytics (limited): Salt Lake still has notable tech employers such as Qualtrics, Domo, Pluralsight, and Lucid Software, but the local Information sector was down 4.2194% year over year in June 2026.[18][15]

Where to focus: Prioritize business-side analytics roles where you can show measurable decisions made from data, not just tooling.

Skills and Credentials Worth Pursuing

• Python (table stakes): Python appears in about 65% of local postings, making it the clearest baseline filter across analyst-to-data-science roles.[4]
• SQL (table stakes): SQL shows up in about 50% of local postings, and national analyst guidance still treats SQL as core for querying and reporting work.[4][19]
• Tableau or Power BI (table stakes): Tableau and Power BI each appear in about 20% of local postings, which shows dashboard delivery still matters in Salt Lake even as AI buzz grows.[4]
• Machine learning and AI literacy (differentiator): Machine learning appears in about 20% of local postings, and AI-related skills now appear in nearly 45% of data and analytics job postings nationally.[4][5]
• Generative AI, prompt engineering, AI agents, and LLM applications (premium): These are identified as frontier skills for data professionals, and roles that explicitly require AI skills carry an average 28% salary premium nationally.[24][25]
• Data governance, privacy, and data quality (differentiator): Utah's HB 418 amendments took effect on July 1, 2026, adding correction rights and new portability and interoperability requirements in some contexts, which increases the value of governed and auditable data work.[16][17]
• Microsoft Certified: Machine Learning Operations Engineer Associate (differentiator): Microsoft's older Azure Data Scientist Associate and Azure AI Engineer Associate certifications retired in June 2026, and the current Microsoft option highlighted here is the Machine Learning Operations Engineer Associate.[21]
• Healthcare, finance, or business-domain fluency (differentiator): A current Intermountain opening wanted backgrounds in statistics, mathematics, information systems, computer science, finance, business, or economics plus at least two years of relevant experience.[2]

Adjacent Roles to Consider

• Revenue Operations Analyst / Sales Operations Analyst (both): Local hiring includes RevOps Advisor among the most active named employers, and the toolkit overlaps with SQL, dashboards, and CRM data work.[7][4]
• Healthcare Operations Analyst (bridge): Intermountain Healthcare posted a Murray telehealth data analyst role, suggesting nearby demand in care delivery, access, scheduling, and operational reporting.[2]
• Risk or Compliance Analyst (pivot): Zions Bancorporation appears among the active named employers, and Utah's July 2026 privacy-law changes raise the value of auditability, controls, and policy-aligned reporting.[7][16][17]
• Business Systems Analyst (bridge): Local analytics roles are asking for backgrounds in information systems, business, and economics, which maps well to business-systems work translating requirements into reports and workflows.[2]

30 / 60 / 90-Day Plan

First 30 Days

• Recut your resume into two versions: one for business-facing analyst roles and one for AI-leaning analyst roles, using Python, SQL, Tableau, and Power BI keywords that appear most often in local postings.[4]
• Build one project around messy vendor or privacy-sensitive data, mirroring the current Salt Lake contract data-cleanup work and Utah's July 2026 privacy changes.[3][16][17]
• Create a target list across healthcare, banking, public sector, and selected Wasatch Front software employers; include Intermountain Healthcare, Zions Bancorporation, RevOps Advisor, and selected local tech firms.[2][7][18]

Days 31-60

• Publish a dashboard case study and a SQL notebook that show business impact, not just charts, because visualization plus query work still sits at the core of analyst hiring.[4][19]
• Apply first to hybrid and on-site roles within 24-36 hours because only about 15% of the local posting sample is remote and typical active postings stay open around 32 days.[6][20]
• Add one domain proof asset: either healthcare KPI vocabulary, banking and risk reporting, or RevOps funnel analysis, depending on your background.[2][7]

Days 61-90

• If interview volume is still weak, pivot some applications toward RevOps, healthcare operations, risk and compliance, or business systems roles instead of only chasing 'Data Scientist' titles.[7][2][16][17]
• If you are Azure-focused, replace retired cert targets with an MLOps or GenAIOps path instead of older Azure data science exams.[21]
• Negotiate around scope and specialization, not just title: current local category pay centers on about $91k to $136k, but analyst-specific offers can sit much lower.[22][23]

Methodology and Confidence

This July 2026 report was generated on August 10, 2026. Latest direct national data: August 2026. Latest direct Salt Lake City-Murray, UT data: August 2026.

Confidence: Overall confidence: High. Based on 7 direct local occupation data points and 19 total local evidence items with recent coverage.

Limitations

• The strongest official metro occupation pay and employment figures available here are for data scientists and are based on May 2024 wage data, so they are a lagged benchmark and do not fully represent every July 2026 sub-role in Data, Analytics & AI.
• Several current pay signals come from salary aggregators or individual postings, which are useful for direction but can reflect niche employers, contract work, or specialized platform roles rather than the typical local offer.
• Statewide Revelio Public Labor Statistics was used as a proxy for Utah Data, Analytics & AI because metro-level occupation-family figures are not published for Salt Lake City-Murray, so statewide direction may not match every local niche.
• The Callings.ai job database is a partial, deduplicated sample of online postings, so demand direction, leading employer names, and skill patterns are more reliable than exact counts or shares in this metro.
• Recent BLS year-over-year metro and state changes for June 2026 are preliminary and may be revised.

References

1. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
2. Simplify. Data Analyst Technical Staff @ Intermountain Healthcare | Simplify Jobs · 2026-07 · simplify.jobs
3. Robert Half. Data Analyst Job in Salt Lake City, UT · 2026-08 · roberthalf.com
4. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
5. Campus. AI Skills Employers Want in 2026: Top 5 to Learn · 2026-07 · campus.edu
6. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
7. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
8. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
9. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
10. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-07 · data.bls.gov
11. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
12. Reveliolabs. Job Openings — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com
13. Reveliolabs. Employment — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com
14. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
15. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
16. Bakerdonelson. U.S. Consumer Data Privacy Law Guide: Utah · 2025-12 · bakerdonelson.com
17. Icemiller. Ice Miller LLP · 2026-05 · icemiller.com
18. Womenhack. Women in Tech Salt Lake City 2026: Career Guide, Events & Community · 2026-01 · womenhack.com
19. Coursera. How Much Do Data Analysts Earn in 2026? Your Salary Guide · 2026-01 · coursera.org
20. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
21. Techguide. Best Data Science Certifications for 2026: Compare Credentials by Career Path · 2026-05 · techguide.org
22. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
23. Readysethire. Data Analyst Salaries & Top Paying Companies in Salt Lake City, UT | Jul 10, 2026 · 2026-08 · readysethire.com
24. Mygreatlearning. From Analytics to AI: The Skills Modern Data Professionals Need in 2026 · 2026-08 · mygreatlearning.com
25. Pin. Data Scientist Recruitment: The Essential 2026 Guide - Pin · 2026-06 · pin.com
26. Stlouisfed. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis · 2026-07 · stlouisfed.org
27. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics Data · 2026-06 · data.bls.gov
28. Reveliolabs. Mass-layoff Notices — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com
29. Callings.ai. Callings.ai job-market aggregation · 2026-07 · callings.ai
30. Getclientell. Salesforce Data Analyst Salary in Salt Lake City (2026) | $103,000 Average · 2026-08 · getclientell.com
31. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bureau of Labor Statistics - 25th_percentile_annual_wage · 2026-05 · bls.gov
32. Reveliolabs. Salaries — Revelio Public Labor Statistics (RPLS) · 2026-07 · reveliolabs.com
33. Utah. Home | Utah.gov · 2026-07 · utah.gov

Live Openings in This Market

This report is published monthly; its companion page tracks the active Data, Analytics & AI openings in Salt Lake City-Murray, UT from the live Callings.ai job index. Browse current Data, Analytics & AI openings in Salt Lake City-Murray, UT.