Educators believe that they are adequately preparing youth for the labor market while at the same time employers lament the students' lack of skills. A possible source of the mismatch in perceptions is that employers and educators have different understandings of the types of skills valued in the labor market. Using economics and psychology literature to define four skills sets --socio-emotional, higher-order cognitive, basic cognitive, and technical -- this paper reviews the literature that quantitatively measures employer skill demand, as reported in a preference survey. A sample of 27 studies reveals remarkable consistency across the world in the skills demanded by employers. While employers value all skill sets, there is a greater demand for socio-emotional skills and higher-order cognitive skills than for basic cognitive or technical skills. These results are robust across region, industry, occupation, and education level. Employers perceive that the greatest skills gaps are in socio-emotional and higher-order cognitive skills. These findings suggest the need to re-conceptualize the public sector's role in preparing children for a future labor market. Namely, technical training is not equivalent to job training; instead, a broad range of skills, many of which are best taught long before labor market entry, should be included in school curricula from the earliest ages. The skills most demanded by employers—higher-order cognitive skills and socio-emotional skills—are largely learned or refined in adolescence, arguing for a general education well into secondary school until these skills are formed. Finally, the public sector can provide programming and incentives to non-school actors, namely parents and employers, to encourage them to invest in the skills development process. Skills, labor demand, cognitive, non-cognitive, behavioral skills, competences, employer surveys, skills policy, education policy, training policy.

中文翻译：

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用人单位的声音，用人单位的要求及其对连接劳工和教育部门的公共技能发展政策的启示

教育工作者认为，他们正在为青年人充分准备为劳动力市场做准备，与此同时，雇主对学生缺乏技能表示遗憾。观念不一致的一个可能原因是，雇主和教育者对劳动力市场上所重视的技能类型有不同的理解。本文使用经济学和心理学文献来定义四种技能集-社会情感，高阶认知，基本认知和技术-本白皮书回顾了偏好调查中定量评估雇主技能需求的文献。27项研究的样本显示，雇主要求的技能在全球范围内具有显着一致性。尽管雇主重视所有技能，与基本的认知或技术技能相比，对社会情感技能和高阶认知技能的需求更大。这些结果在各个地区，行业，职业和教育水平上都是可靠的。雇主认为最大的技能差距是在社会情感和高阶认知技能上。这些发现表明，有必要重新概念化公共部门在为未来的劳动力市场准备儿童方面的作用。即，技术培训不等于职业培训；取而代之的是，应从最早的时候就将广泛的技能（其中许多最好在进入劳动力市场之前就最好地教授）纳入学校课程中。雇主最需要的技能（高阶认知技能和社会情感技能）在青春期就已大量学习或完善，要求将普通教育很好地纳入中学，直到这些技能形成为止。最后，公共部门可以向非学校行为者（即父母和雇主）提供计划和激励措施，以鼓励他们在技能发展过程中进行投资。技能，劳动力需求，认知，非认知，行为技能，能力，雇主调查，技能政策，教育政策，培训政策。