A study finds that the majority of jobs now require digital skills

The National Skills Coalition made use of data from 43 million online job postings to analyze the demand for digital skills in employees and revealed their findings with their latest report. According to the results, the vast majority of jobs today demand some type of digital skill from candidates.

As a percentage, the share of jobs requiring digital skills is now at 92% as found by the National Skills Coalition. Across the states, digital skills training programs are increasing even as we speak. However, gaps are remaining which must be addressed by government agencies.

The report was titled, “Closing the Digital Skills Divide: The Payoff for Workers, Business and the Economy,” and was released in partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. The researchers used empirical data from 43 million online job postings that were listed in 2021. Using this data, they assessed the economic demand for digital skills in different industries.

According to the findings, 92% of jobs require digital skills. This percentage is made up of 47% of jobs definitely requiring digital skills and 45% of jobs likely requiring digital skills. 8% of jobs don’t require digital skills at all. Specifically, there are two major categories of digital skills needed from employees: foundational and industry-specific skills.

Foundational digital skills are skills such as typing, the ability to use mobile applications, and familiarity with common software packages like Microsoft. Industry-specific digital skills are typically contained within an industry. These are the specific platforms or software packages commonly used by employees in a given industry.

Digital resilience is an important quality for those looking for employment in the present day. Digital resilience is the ability to continually learn different types of industry-specific skills. You must be flexible and adaptable to the changes in your job and your career with time. The foundation of digital upskilling lies in building connections between the skills you currently have to the skills you will need in the future.

If you are an employer, your training and development programs should be streamlined to the needs of the participants. Also, the training programs must be created in such a way that they provide contextualized, integrated education to the learners, enabling them to identify the real-world applications of the digital skills they are learning.

There is a strong correlation between higher wages and jobs which require digital skills. The jobs requiring at least one digital skill pay 23% more than those which do not. According to the study, the median hourly wage of jobs that don’t require digital skills is $17.62. The same figure for the jobs which require only one digital skill is $21.64. The median hourly wage of a job that requires three digital skills is $25.50. And the jobs that require nine digital skills pay you a median hourly wage of $43.00.

As found by the study, workers of color are more likely to remain in jobs that don’t pay well or where employees don’t invest in upskilling the employees.