These skills make you most employable. Why isn’t coding in the top 10?

Abstract

Employability depends on more than just income potential; job satisfaction and automation risk are also important factors. An analysis incorporating job satisfaction, automation risk, income, and breadth of application suggests that social, analytical, and management skills (e.g., judgment, critical thinking, time management, active listening) are more valuable than traditionally emphasized STEM skills (e.g., mathematics, programming). This contrasts with the common assumption that technical skills are increasingly crucial in the age of automation. Evidence indicates STEM jobs, excluding computing, declined from 2000-2012, while jobs requiring social skills saw wage growth. Although STEM skills correlate with higher income, they are associated with lower job satisfaction than social skills, given the same income level. While some STEM skills are in high demand (e.g., software development, data science), others face oversupply. Although “leadership” skills are highly employable, they may be harder to learn and demonstrate to employers than technical skills. Therefore, while social and analytical skills are valuable in desirable jobs, STEM skills, especially in computing, offer potentially faster improvement and remain important for specific career paths and social impact areas like AI and bioengineering. – AI-generated abstract.