Thoughts On the Unemployed Salary Survey Responses
In this year’s data professional salary survey, I added a new response type for folks who are unemployed and looking for data work. The survey is still in progress, but you can view the data as it’s coming in, and I wanted to take a few minutes to read through the responses of folks who are unemployed.
First, how many unemployed folks have taken the survey:
It’s only 32 responses out of 575 altogether – about 5% – so I’m hesitant to read too much into their individual responses. However, let’s filter the data for just the unemployed folks, and then look at their job titles to see if a particular job type stands out:
Okay, deep calming breath: the number 8 does stand out head and shoulders above the rest, but remember, we’re only talking about 32 survey responses overall from people looking for jobs. Plus, remember that my audience is DBAs – here’s the percentages of job titles across the EMPLOYED audience:
See, the numbers line up – 25% of the unemployed responses are from general DBAs, but also 27% of the employed responses – so they’re right in line with the audience overall. It’s not like a higher percentage of DBAs are unemployed than the other job roles – but then again, keep in mind that it wouldn’t take much of a response turnout to skew these numbers.
Let’s ask a different question: amongst the unemployed responses (for all job titles), how many years of experience do they have?
A good chunk of the unemployed responses have 10-15 years of experience, and they’re making six figures. It’s not just junior folks who are looking for work. When these senior folks email me for job hunting advice, I say the same thing over and over: get back in touch with everyone you’ve ever worked with before, via their personal emails and phone numbers, and catch up. Tell them you’re in the market. You shouldn’t be ashamed – a lot of their companies may be hiring, and they’re faced with a deluge of unqualified applicants using AI garbage to get past interview screening. By offering yourself as a candidate, you’re doing them a favor! They know you and trust your work.
Moving on, let’s switch over to the employed folks and look at what their job plans are for 2026:
A whopping 20% (7 + 13) plan to change employers! That’s a huge number because it affects the 5% of the audience that’s already looking for work – they’re all competing for the same jobs at new companies. That’s going to be a tough market.
One other note while I’ve got the survey data open – where are companies hosting their data these days?
Most companies are using a hybrid approach of cloud, rented data center space, and cloud. It’s a wide mix though, and hopefully someone from the community takes this raw data and visualizes it in a better way, heh.
Speaking of which – help contribute to the raw data! Fill in the annual Data Professional Salary Survey now.
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Hi Brent, a side question – in a Survey, “primary database you work with” – do you think Azure SQL Managed Instance should be added to this list ? Because I am not sure what to select, Microsoft SQL Server or Azure SQL DB. SQL MI is in the middle 🙂
In next year’s version, I’ll make it more specific by saying “Azure SQL DB (any flavor)” but yes, in the meantime, if your database product starts with the words “Azure SQL DB”, it’s Azure SQL DB. Same with Hyperscale. Cheers!
We recently went through a hiring process for a junior consultant DBA, operational space, not development. Junior in this context means 2-5 years of appropriate experience, with previous consulting a bonus.
This is the first time that over half of the applicants were rejected because they were too experienced. I had people with 15-20 years experience applying for a junior role. I know its just a single sample, but my feeling is that there is definitely more experienced people out there looking for work. My gut feeling, based on a few conversations now, is that we are seeing companies using AI and laying off more expensive staff as a result. Hollowing out some DBA teams, leaving juniors in place with maybe a single senior but expected to use AI to take up the strain.
I am curious why you would reject someone for having too much experience? If they are ok with the lower pay scale for the junior role, why would you not hire them?
I have the same questions, because it happens to me (10+ years of experience, unemployed and looking for a job regardless the salary)
Sometimes companies don’t want to hire someone overqualified because they’re worried that the employee is only looking for short-term work until they find a more appropriate (higher-paying) position that can more fully utilize their experience.
Imagine me asking to come to work for you as a junior DBA, for example. You’d be excited at first (maybe, hahaha), but your HR department would ask some pretty pointed questions about why you would think I’d stick around.
Gavin – yeah, anecdotally, I knew a lot more senior people in the market during 2025. Some of it was due to layoffs related to sudden endings of government contracts, or the government shutdown, or dramatic changes in the visa market, or business changes due to tariffs.
I haven’t actually heard someone get an AI-related layoff first hand, but I agree that I’ve read stories about companies proclaiming that their layoffs are due to increased reliance on AI. In those stories, it seemed like they were using AI as an excuse, but layoffs are layoffs, and at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter why – it’s still a layoff.
Anyhoo, all that to say yes, I agree, more senior folks in the market these days.
I’m one of the unemployed 15+ years’ experience folks from the survey. Been out of work for about 12 months of the the past two years, and employed continuously from the age of 16 prior to that.
I’m applying for junior roles too, in addition to service desk, junior dev, BA roles, customer service, data entry, receptionist, you name it. Things seem to be bad in the UK — the trouble with applying to junior roles within your wheelhouse is that there’s not much way to hide how much experience you’ve got other than removing stuff from your CV or tweaking the dates a little. I’m starting to focus more on the non-tech applications as I’m getting more response from them — if they don’t know what a DBA is they may be a lot less likely to dismiss you as overqualified.
Agree with Brent re: “are they going to stick around?” — I had this with one of my first jobs and quickly learned to keep my GCSEs off my CV. With things as they are here though, I personally think it’s a bit crackers to reject somebody as overqualified — chances are they’re gonna stick around cause they have no choice; I’m literally selling my possessions to eat and pay rent. Once I get something and manage to pay off all the debts I’ve incurred, I’m saving up to become a plumber so I can make a quiet exit from tech entirely.
I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve heard pretty apocalyptic stories out of the UK employment market recently.