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

Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 2023, vol. 62, issue 3, 257-287

Abstract: This paper examines the role of lifelong learning in counteracting skill depreciation and obsolescence. We differentiate between occupations with more hard skills versus more soft skills and 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 to 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 empirical patterns regarding the benefits of lifelong learning, which are consistent with theoretical explanations based on structurally different skill depreciation rates: 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. By 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.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12325

Related works:
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:bla:indres:v:62:y:2023:i:3:p:257-287

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0019-8676

Access Statistics for this article

Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society is currently edited by Christopher (Kitt) Carpenter, Steven Raphael and stevenraphael@berkeley.edu

More articles in Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().