Social Skills and the Individual Wage Growth of Less Educated Workers

Arbeitspapier

We use matched employee-employer data from the UK to highlight the importance of social skills, including the ability to work well in a team and communicate effectively with co-workers, as a driver for individual wage growth for workers with few formal educational qualifications. We show that lower educated workers in occupations where social skills are more important experience steeper wage growth with tenure, and also higher early exit rates, than equivalent workers in occupations where social skills are less important. Moreover, the return to tenure in occupations where social skills are important is stronger in firms with a larger share of higher educated workers. 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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 16456

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope
• Subject: team work ; social skills ; individual wage growth ; firm pay premium

Contributors, Location and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Aghion, Philippe ; Bergeaud, Antonin ; Blundell, Richard ; Griffith, Rachel
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/282583
• Last update: 20.09.2024, 8:21 AM CEST