Key Soft Skills that Foster Youth Workforce Success

A recent Child Trends report, Key Soft Skills that Foster Youth Workforce Success, looks at relationships between soft skills and four workplace outcomes: getting a job or being employed, performance on the job, wages, and entrepreneurial success. According to the report, there is strong evidence that the following five skills increase workforce success among youth ages 15 - 29: social skills; communication; and higher-order thinking skills (including problem solving, critical thinking, and decision-making); supported by the intrapersonal skills of self-control and positive self-concept. Youth who develop these key soft skills will be better able to effectively identify, use, and communicate their strengths, relate to others, make decisions to achieve their own goals, as well as contribute to their workplaces and communities. View the Executive Summary or the full report.