Increasing awareness of the productive potential of soft skills has sparked a discussion of their systematic and purposeful development. However, education systems pay only limited attention to this topic in most countries and remain focused on the development of hard skills. Is this approach rational or inadequate? This article provides new evidence on different aspects of the wage returns to soft skills (as an approximation of their productivity), and thereby contributes significantly to the discussion of the role of educational institutions in their development. It provides evidence that soft skills are as productive as hard skills. Moreover, it suggests that the productivity of hard skills stems from their combination with soft skills. These conclusions do not correspond to the fact that the value of education is intermediated mainly by hard skills, resulting in unequal development of soft and hard skills in schools. While concluding that education systems should pay more attention to soft skills development, the analysis recognises that this attention should be differentiated according to employers’ needs, owing to substantial differences in the value of soft skills across economic sectors. It is also noteworthy that while significant gender differences in returns to hard skills were identified, wage returns to soft skills appear gender neutral. JEL Codes: J24, J31, J71

Psychological traits, attitudes and soft skills represent factors whose effect on an individual’s wages has begun to be examined recently. Today, there is an extensive empirical body on wage returns to the first two factors, but still a relatively small one on wage returns to soft skills, such as communication, cooperation, leadership etc. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of empirical literature on wage returns to soft skills. It suggests that soft skills are connected with significant wage returns and contribute to closing the gender wage gap. The end of the paper focuses on a discussion on methodological approaches to measurement of soft skills and relevancy of their approximation by job characteristics (incl. suggestion of using tools of competency modelling for this purpose).

Abstract:Knowledge of employers´ requirements on competencies of job applicants is highly important in the process of human capital accumulation. This paper focuses on the general competencies since they can be applied in a wide range of jobs or tasks and increase an individual's employability. First, employers´ requirements on general competencies are identifi ed and described on the basis of 3,822 job advertisements published online. Second, the econometric analysis is used in order to test hypothesis whether examined demand for general competencies is really general or if it differs signifi cantly with respect to required education and fi rm characteristics. The results of our probit regressions proved that the requirements on examined general skills signifi cantly differ according to the education required and some categories of NACE and ownership of the fi rms.

Finding a job is easier for people who are better equipped with soft skills, as they are more productive. Therefore, this article deals with the evaluation of soft skills of graduates from Czech public universities. The results show that the same soft skills are required from university graduates as from the population as a whole (only problem solving is more pronounced with them), but the required level of these skills is 42% higher in the case of graduates. Unfortunately, employers perceive the level of graduates’ soft skills insufficient as their level is by 16.46 to 31.15% lower than required. A more detailed analysis showed that, in terms of the development of soft skills, Czech universities provide a very homogenous service. Graduates of universities have nearly the same level of soft skills, while they can also identify similar strengths and weaknesses. These findings suggest that Czech universities should pay more attention to the systematic development of soft skills.

In this paper, we show the first descriptive evidence of factors explaining gender wage differences from a unique questionnaire survey that was carried out on a representative sample for the Czech Republic. We observe large wage differences related to gender; without any reasons, Czech women earn on average 77.80% of men's wages. The survey uncovers that there is a number of differences among men and women which may help to explain the wage differences.