Data Mining rated as a "hot" career choice by UCSD Extension

The University of California San Diego (UCSD) Extension, in its study called "Hot Careers for College Graduates 2010" gives top marks to Data Mining as a career choice for recent and mid-career college graduates.  Its hottest 10 career options are listed below.  The top 4 careers continue to remain in computers (inspite of the significant outsourcing of software development jobs overseas).

1. Healthcare Information Technology
2. Mobile Media
3. Data Mining
4. Embedded Engineering
5. Geriatric Healthcare
6. Occupational Health & Safety
7. Spanish/English Translation & Interpretation
8. Sustainable Business Practices & Greening of all Jobs
9. Feature Writing for the Web
10. Teaching English as a Foreign Language

URLs for the study
Brief summary: http://extension.ucsd.edu/about/display/dsp_release.cfm?vAction=view&vEventID=566
Detailed paper: http://extension.ucsd.edu/about/images/careerReport.pdf

A quote from the summary

"Looking for a needle in a haystack is a good analogy for data mining jobs. Data mining is the technique of extracting specific types of information or patterns from large databases, such as data warehouses. Advanced statistical methods sift through large volumes of data, providing answers to questions that were once too time-consuming."

A quote from the detailed PDF document

"More importantly, data mining is a rapidly growing industry due to the explosion of available data. A study by students and faculty at the University of California Berkeley found that the amount of data in the world doubles every three years. For this reason, more employees are needed in the data mining industry to drill down, analyze and interpret the data.

"Career prospects exist in several areas, such as advertising technology, fraud detection, surveillance, web mining, probabilistic trading, risk management, business intelligence, scientific research and law enforcement. Data mining requires comprehension of algorithms and advanced statistics, and the ability to program and use advanced software. Job hunters with computer science and statistics training, along with good business sense, would be well-suited to this career. Individuals with an understanding of the appropriate math and computer science would also be well qualified.

"Data Mining Analysts, Data Mining Researchers, Data Mining Scientists and other Data Mining professionals can expect to earn high wages."