by Angela Guess

According to a recent press release, “Qlik, a leader in data analytics, today announced the results from its U.S. Data Literacy Survey, revealing an escalating skills gap preventing those in the workforce from making strategic, data-driven decisions. Data literacy and analytics skills can help companies and their employees capitalize on an unprecedented economic opportunity, which many are referring to as the Analytics Economy. Yet in the U.S. of over a thousand business leaders surveyed, only 33 percent of employees feel confident in their data literacy skills, defined as the ability to read, work with, analyze and argue with data. ‘With more data being created today than ever before, workers lack the skills to fully leverage this abundance of information to create actionable insights. To bridge this skills gap and prepare people to keep up with the accelerating pace at which data is being created and consumed, Qlik is on a mission toward making the world more data literate,’ said Jordan Morrow, Head of Data Literacy at Qlik.”

The release goes on, “Respondents overwhelmingly agree that data not only helps them do their job better (97 percent) but enhances their credibility (87 percent). 74% agree their company would value them more if they improved their data literacy level. 82% said they would be willing to invest more time and energy into improving their data literacy skills. 93% of people that are reported as data literate say they are performing very well at work. Junior-level employees in the U.S. are among those least confident in completing data-oriented tasks, with only 21 percent classifying themselves as data literate. Middle managers (28 percent) in the U.S. are less likely to be data literate in comparison to C-suite executives (38 percent), despite using data more times per week in their positions.”

Read more at Business Wire.

Photo credit: Qlik