Is no (soft) skill left behind? Do soft skills enable job mobility

Aaron Semtner, Janet Dzator and Andrew Nadolny

Applied Economics, 2025, vol. 57, issue 33, 4897-4915

Abstract: High job mobility or labour turnover is historically treated as detrimental for businesses and workers. With new technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) that further increase soft skill demand, there is an opportunity for beneficial job mobility of workers reallocating to productive businesses supported by transferable soft skills. However, Australian businesses risk missing these benefits as Australian workers have yet to reach pre-GFC mobility. We use the HILDA longitudinal dataset for Australia to test how the soft skill measures of communication skills, time management, and low task repetitiveness are associated with mobility for Australian workers measured using changing jobs directly and hourly wages as a measure of mobility success. The survival analysis for changing jobs finds soft skills have no significant effect on the expected employment duration prior to changing jobs, while measures of overall skills beyond soft skills increase this duration. Further, measures of soft skills and overall skills have mixed effects on wages by themselves, and when moderated with changing jobs these terms are almost completely insignificant. Overall, the potential transferability of soft skills does not translate into practical mobility, suggesting limitations for workers seeking to improve their working conditions via changing jobs.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2024.2364103

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