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I assume the second unsaid part of that sentence is "for data and statistical work", because that's the only context the comparison makes sense.

R is great, because that's what it was designed for. A lot of complex calculations are far more elegant in R than Python. The shinyverse is far better developed than anything Python has to offer, and lets you create some fantastic visualisations.

On the other hand, Python is a lot easier to learn (particularly for someone coming from other programming languages) and (outside academia) a lot more widely known and used. As a statistical language its libraries are less mature than R, but they're perfectly adequate and improving all the time. As a language it's more versatile, easier to create stuff that needs to be put into production, and people outside the data/statistical field are going to be more comfortable with it.

If I wanted to work in data and was picking one or the other to learn today - I'd probably go with Python. The only exception would be if I was specifically planning on doing university/research work, where R is still king.

But before learning either, I'd become an SQL ninja.