Technological developments and the automation of work tasks have drastically changed labor markets in recent years. What skills are important in today's labor markets? And what happens when employees' skills do not match the requirements of the job? These are the questions addressed by the new project "Skills that Matter: Workplace Skills in a Changing World," or SKILLS for short. This joint project by the Leibniz Institutes GESIS, LIfBi, and ifo is one of the few projects approved in the current funding round of the Leibniz Competition.
In recent years, labor markets have undergone profound changes due to technological and demographic shifts—and with them, the requirements for employees. As a result, previous research findings on skills and their returns in the world of work are losing their significance. In addition, the importance of non-cognitive skills—i.e., interdisciplinary skills such as personality traits, motivation, or attitudes—has been largely neglected to date.
The SKILLS project addresses this issue by combining expertise from the fields of educational research, sociology, psychology, and economics. Researchers from Mannheim, Bamberg, and Munich are using extensive international data sets that contain not only cognitive but also non-cognitive measures of competence: the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and the National Education Panel Study (NEPS).
The focus is on four questions:
- How do the returns on cognitive and interdisciplinary skills differ in terms of income in different societies – and have there been changes over time?
- What are the consequences of a so-called “skill mismatch” on labor market success when personal and professional skills do not match?
- What role does age play in skill acquisition or loss?
- And how important is continuing education in this context?
Research at LIfBi focuses on the topic of skill mismatch, i.e., the divergence between the individual skills of employees and the skills required for their jobs. The frequency, causes, and consequences of skill mismatch in Germany and in international comparison are examined.
The project will start in January 2026 and run for three years. It is funded by the Leibniz Association as part of the Leibniz Cooperative Excellence program. SKILLS was proposed by Prof. Dr. Beatrice Rammstedt (GESIS), Prof. Dr. Corinna Kleinert (LIfBi), and Prof. Dr. Ludger Wößmann (ifo Institute). With its interdisciplinary approach, SKILLS aims to provide new insights into the factors that shape skills and their returns, and the impact this has on employment and income.
To the project page