Soft-skills and labour market outcomes : the case of young people French graduates
Abstract
Young people throughout the course of their education and training within or outside the educational system can acquire a range of skills that they may make use of on the labour market. Much research has recently been done into the impact of soft skills, that is, non-cognitive skills, on the labour market in connection with "people skills" that might influence employability. We have attempted to construct soft-skill indicators and then to measure their effects on graduate pay on the basis of a study of a sample of masters graduates having responded to the Céreq Generation 2010 survey and re-surveyed in 2014. We show that certain soft skills explain a proportion of the remuneration of young masters graduates from business and engineering schools. They influence the highest salaries in particular, suggesting that these soft skills are important for the most highly skilled jobs.