Arbeitspapier
Social skills and the individual wage growth of less educated workers
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.
- Language
-
Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
-
Series: IFS Working Papers ; No. 23/25
- 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
- Event
-
Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
-
Aghion, Philippe
Bergeaud, Antonin
Blundell, Richard W.
Griffith, Rachel
- Event
-
Veröffentlichung
- (who)
-
Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)
- (where)
-
London
- (when)
-
2023
- DOI
-
doi:10.1920/wp/ifs.2023.2523
- Handle
- Last update
-
10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET
Data provider
This object is provided by:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Aghion, Philippe
- Bergeaud, Antonin
- Blundell, Richard W.
- Griffith, Rachel
- Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)
Time of origin
- 2023
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