"AI Era, Social Skills Like Teamwork and Communication More Important"

Bank of Korea's Report on 'Increasing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market'
In the AI Era, Social Skills Become More Important Than Mathematical Abilities

As the era of artificial intelligence (AI) approaches, there is a growing expectation that the importance of social skills, such as teamwork and communication abilities that are difficult to replace with automation technology, will increase.

According to the Bank of Korea's report titled "Increasing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market" released on the 10th, as automation technologies including AI advance, various tasks previously performed by humans are being replaced, and interest in social skills in the labor market is also growing.

The report quantitatively measured social tasks and skills in the domestic labor market and analyzed whether the importance of social skills has increased in terms of labor input and wages.

First, the intensity of mathematical (cognitive) and social tasks was measured by occupation. Based on this, occupations were classified into four mutually exclusive groups to investigate changes in labor input.

As a result, over the past 14 years (2008?2022), the share of jobs focused on social skills increased by 7 percentage points (from 49% to 56%), while the share of jobs focused on mathematical (cognitive) skills increased by a smaller 5 percentage points (from 50% to 55%). Jobs low in both skills (Low Social-Low Math) decreased by 8 percentage points (from 43% to 36%).

Oh Sam-il, head of the Employment Analysis Team at the Bank of Korea's Research Department and author of the report, emphasized, "This suggests that as the level of skills used across the labor market rises, the importance of social skills is increasing even more."

In terms of wages, social skills outpaced cognitive skills. Cognitive skills were measured by math test scores, while social skills were assessed using responses related to satisfaction during school years, peer group tendencies, and individual personality traits.

Estimating wage regression equations showed that wage compensation for social skills has recently increased, whereas wage compensation for cognitive skills has decreased. Specifically, when an individual's social skill level is 1 unit (1 standard deviation) higher, wages were estimated to be 4.4% higher during 2007?2015 and 5.9% higher during 2016?2020, an increase of 1.5 percentage points.

Conversely, when cognitive skill level is 1 unit (1 standard deviation) higher, wages were 10.9% higher during 2007?2015 but decreased by 1.6 percentage points to 9.3% higher during 2016?2020.

Team leader Oh stated, "This means that the importance of social skills in the labor market has increased not only in terms of employment but also in wage compensation."

He explained, "With the advancement of automation technology, various tasks performed by humans are being replaced. In particular, AI can replace cognitive tasks that were previously limited by existing technologies, whereas social skills are difficult to replace with automation technology because tacit knowledge such as intuition, judgment, creativity, and flexibility is hard to clearly codify."

He added, "In a situation where various tasks are being replaced by automation technology, developing social skills, where humans have a comparative advantage, will become more important in terms of education and vocational training. It is crucial to provide opportunities in educational settings from early childhood to develop not only cognitive skills but also social skills that enable communication and collaboration with others."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.