Analyzing How Skills Impact Salary Using Excel (Part 2)

James Gifford
Jun 24
2 min read

Updated: Oct 10

This post is Part 2 of my Excel salary data project. In the first project, I built an interactive dashboard to explore salary ranges by job title, location, and schedule type.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you can check out Part 1 here.

Download Excel File

View Full Analysis on GitHub

This analysis explores how specific data skills influence pay and how salary patterns vary by region. Using Power Query, Power Pivot, and DAX, I built an integrated Excel model that connects job listings and skill data to reveal what drives higher compensation in analytics roles.

Questions I Explored:

Do more skills lead to better pay?
What’s the salary across different regions?
What are the most common data job skills?
Which skills are linked to higher salaries?

Excel Skills Used:

Power Query
PivotTables
DAX
Power Pivot
Pivot Charts

ETL Process with Power Query:

I loaded and cleaned two datasets: one with job listings and one with skills linked to each job ID. After transforming the data by changing column types and cleaning text, I loaded both tables into Excel for analysis.

Table relationship diagram for jobs and skills tables

Insights:

Do More Skills Mean Higher Pay?

Yes — roles that listed more required skills (like Senior Data Engineer) had higher median salaries. Jobs requiring fewer skills, like Business Analyst, had noticeably lower pay.

Scatterplot showing the relationship between number of required skills and median salary, illustrating that roles with more skills tend to offer higher pay.

Regional Salary Breakdown:

Using PivotTables and DAX, I compared salary data between U.S. and non-U.S. listings. The U.S. tends to pay more, especially in technical roles.

Comparison of median salaries in the US vs non-US by job title

Top Skills in Data Jobs:

Power Pivot helped me analyze which skills appeared most often. SQL and Python were dominant, with cloud tools like AWS and Azure also rising in popularity.

What are the top skills of data nerds? Skill likelihood in job postings for top 10 skills

Which Skills Pay the Most?

I created a combo chart showing how different skills correlate with salary. Python, Oracle, and SQL are linked to higher pay. Less technical tools like PowerPoint and Word showed up in lower-salary listings.

Conclusion:

This project demonstrates how Excel can turn complex job data into actionable insights about pay and skill value. It highlights how structured analysis with Power Query, DAX, and Power Pivot can uncover patterns that inform workforce planning and compensation strategy.