Different degrees of skill obsolescence across hard and soft skills and the role of lifelong learning for labor market outcomes

Tobias Schultheiss and Uschi Backes-Gellner

No 188, Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Abstract: This paper examines the role of lifelong learning in counteracting skill depreciation and obsolescence. We build on findings showing that different skill types have structurally different depreciation rates. We differentiate between occupations with more hard skills versus more soft skills. To do so, we draw on representative job advertisement data that contain machine-learning categorized skill requirements and cover the Swiss job market in great detail across occupations (from 1950-2019). We examine lifelong learning effects for "harder" versus "softer" occupations, thereby analyzing the role of training in counteracting skill depreciation in occupations that are differently affected by skill depreciation. Our results reveal novel patterns regarding the benefits from lifelong learning across occupations: In harder occupations, with large shares of fast-depreciating hard skills, the role of lifelong learning is primarily as a hedge against unemployment risks rather than a boost to wages. In contrast, in softer occupations, in which workers build on more value-stable soft skill foundations, the role of lifelong learning instead lies mostly in acting as a boost for upward career mobility and leads to larger wage gains.

JEL-codes: I26 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2021-11, Revised 2022-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-cmp, nep-edu and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.business.uzh.ch/RePEc/iso/leadinghouse/0188_lhwpaper.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Different Degrees of Skill Obsolescence across Hard and Soft Skills and the Role of Lifelong Learning for Labor Market Outcomes (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:educat:0188

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sara Brunner ().