Working Paper: NBER ID: w11985
Authors: Lex Borghans; Bas ter Weel; Bruce A. Weinberg
Abstract: Despite indications that people skills are important for understanding individual labor-market outcomes and have become more important over the last decades, there is little analysis by economists. This paper shows that people skills are important determinants of labor-market outcomes, including occupations and wages. We show that technological and organizational changes have increased the importance of people skills in the workplace. We particularly focus on how the increased importance of people skills has affected the labor-market outcomes of under represented groups. We show that the acceleration rate of increase in the importance of people skills between the late 1970s and early 1990s can help explain why women's wages increased more rapidly while the wages of blacks grew more slowly over these years relative to earlier years.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: J16; J21; J24; J31
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| increased importance of people skills (J24) | acceleration of women's wage growth (J31) |
| sociability (Z13) | engagement in occupations that prioritize people tasks (J29) |
| engagement in occupations that prioritize people tasks (J29) | wage outcomes (J31) |
| increased demand for people skills (J29) | stagnation of black wages relative to white wages (J79) |
| one standard deviation increase in the importance of people tasks (J29) | 5% decrease in wages (J31) |
| relative employment of women in occupations with higher emphasis on people tasks (J21) | increase (O42) |
| relative employment of racial and ethnic minorities in occupations with higher emphasis on people tasks (J15) | decrease (E31) |