Soft skills and individual wage growth of less educated workers

Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Richard Blundell and Rachel Griffith

What is the role of soft skills in individual wage growth for less educated workers?

The importance of a range of soft skills, and the ability to work effectively with colleagues, has shown to be important for high skilled workers. In this paper we explore their importance for the individual wage growth of less educated workers in the UK. We show that the payoff to these skills varies across occupations and firms. We rationalize our findings using a model of wage bargaining with complementarity between the skills and abilities of less educated workers and the firm’s other assets.