People Skills and the Labor-Market Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups

Lex Borghans, Bas ter Weel and Bruce Weinberg

ILR Review, 2014, vol. 67, issue 2, 287-334

Abstract: In this article, the authors show that people skills are important determinants of labor-market outcomes, including occupational choice and wages. Technological and organizational changes have increased the importance of people skills in the workplace. The authors particularly focus on how the increased importance of these skills has affected the labor-market outcomes of underrepresented groups, assuming that gender differences in interactions and cultural differences and prejudice may impede cross-racial and ethnic interactions. Estimates for Britain, Germany, and the United States are consistent with such an explanation. An acceleration in the rate of increase in the importance of people skills between the late 1970s and early 1990s in the United States can help explain why the gender wage gap closed and the black-white wage gap stagnated in these years relative to the preceding and following years.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (94)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001979391406700202 (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: People Skills and the Labor-Market Outcomes of Underrepresented Groups (2013)
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:sae:ilrrev:v:67:y:2014:i:2:p:287-334

DOI: 10.1177/001979391406700202

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in ILR Review from Cornell University, ILR School
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().