Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Technological change often results in the restructuring of labor markets. The redesign manifests itself in changes in the demand and supply of human capital. More often, new job requirements emergence, therefore, changing the types of jobs available by either facing-out existing ones, creating new ones, or restructuring the existing ones. These changes are conspicuous in skills' demands. A vast literature in labor economics has shown increased returns of technology complementarity with high-skills requirements or skill-biased technological change (SBTC) (Katz et al., 1991; Murnane et al., 1995; Acemoglu et al., 2011) in the last three decades. Subsequently, the diminishing of middle-skills routine tasks leading to job polarization phenomenon also known as routine-biased technological change (RBTC) (Goos et al., 2007; Autor et al., 2008; Micheal et al., 2014). While we know the adoption of new technologies in the labor market will upset the skill requirements, very little is known about what is happening and what will happen to soft skills in the next technology intense job nexus. This paper intends to fill this gap. What follows is a review of technology and labor market changes, what we know about several sets of skills in the labor force, and soft skills significance in the high technology labor market in the current and future of works.