The High Demand for Durable Skills

The need for students to develop soft skills alongside academic and technical skills was apparent long before the pandemic. However, COVID-19 greatly accelerated existing trends. 

We cannot predict the future but we can help prepare students – every student – by equipping them with Durable Skills. We have an opportunity to transform career pathways for the benefit of students, employers, and communities by focusing on developing these common competencies in K-12 education.

This report was designed to accelerate that transformation; data can be an incredibly powerful tool. Leveraging labor market insights from more than 82 million job postings, we can clearly demonstrate workforce demand for Durable Skills across industries, occupations, and geographies.

Download ‘The High Demand for Durable Skills’ Report

Companies will continue to compete on innovation and talent like never before, which makes the use, sharing, and transparency of skills data across stakeholder groups even more important to the world of work. Collective action around Durable Skills is one way to ensure Americans have the right skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow, and the economy has the skilled workforce it needs to grow.” Cheryl Oldham, Senior Vice President of Education and Workforce, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation

Highlights

Seven of the ten (7 out of 10) most requested skills in job postings are Durable Skills.

Demand is greatest in jobs more aligned to the future of work: 91% of management jobs, 86% of business operations jobs, and 81% of engineering jobs demand Durable Skills.

Employers seek Durable Skills nearly four times (3.8X) more frequently than the top 5 technical or hard skills.

Durable Skills & National Policy Analysis Website

This website presents Durable Skills data alongside college- and career-ready standards, work-based learning frameworks, and high school graduation requirements for all 50 states plus DC, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

DurableSkills.org is a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive, publicly available resource for policymakers, advocates, business leaders, and educators. Combining the proprietary Durable Skills data by America Succeeds and Lightcast (formerly Emsi Burning Glass) with a national policy landscape analysis helps put actionable information into the hands of decision-makers to drive positive change.