|
High Tech, High Touch: Technology Puts Emphasis on Social Skills
What jobs will be left for people, as machines increasingly perform tasks once thought to be reserved for humans?
A National Bureau of Economic Research paper by David Deming, Harvard Graduate School of Education, suggests it'll be those that require strong social skills - something that is much more difficult to automate.
"The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market," shows that nearly all job growth since 1980 has been in occupations that are relatively social skill-intensive - and it argues that high-skilled, hard-to-automate jobs will demand social adeptness.
Jobs involving a lot of math, but less social interaction, have shrunk in terms of total share of the U.S. labor force over the past three decades. So it still pays to be good at math in today's labor market, but it's often no longer enough. You need to have both types of skills.
Deming makes these observations about social skills: 1) social skills are valued in jobs across the entire wage distribution, 2) social skills and cognitive skills complement each other, and 3) jobs that require low levels of social skills are also likely to be routine jobs (filing clerks, factory jobs) at high risk of automation.
So why are social skills so prized in today's labor market? Computers are still bad at simulating social interaction. And being able to play off a team member's strengths and adapt to changing circumstances is important in the modern team-based workplace.
People who have higher social skills earn more money - even after controlling for their education, their cognitive skills, what type of job they're in, etc. - than those with poor social skills, Deming has found. There seems to be a positive return to social skills in the labor market, and that return is relatively greater when people are in jobs that require more interaction with others.
One more thing: There's an interesting correlation between social skills becoming more important and the narrowing of the gender gap when it comes to jobs and wages. It's speculative, but some studies show that women tend to score higher on emotional and social intelligence tests.
______________________________________________________________
| 
