Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/284251 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
IFS Working Papers No. 23/25
Publisher: 
Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), London
Abstract: 
We use matched employee-employer data from the UK to highlight the importance of social skills, including the ability to work well in a team and communicate effectively with co-workers, as a driver for individual wage growth for workers with few formal educational qualifications. We show that lower educated workers in occupations where social skills are more important experience steeper wage growth with tenure, and also higher early exit rates, than equivalent workers in occupations where social skills are less important. Moreover, the return to tenure in occupations where social skills are important is stronger in firms with a larger share of higher educated workers. We rationalize our findings using a model of wage bargaining with complementarity between the skills and abilities of less educated workers and the firm's other assets.
Subjects: 
team work
social skills
individual wage growth
firm pay premium
JEL: 
J31
J24
L25
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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