 42. Some Contributions of Economics to the Study of Personality 867
based credentials above years of schooling, 
grades, and test scores as part of the skills 
needed for success in the workplace (Zem -
sky, 1997).
Noncognitive skills are especially critical 
for entry level and hourly workers. Of em -
ployers drawn from a national sample in the 
United States in 1996, 69% reported reject -
ing hourly applicants because they lacked 
basic employability skills, such as showing 
up every day, coming to work on time, and 
having a strong work ethic. This percent -
age is more than double the percentage of 
rejected applicants due to inadequate read -
ing and writing skills. Rejections for not 
passing a drug test were almost as common 
as rejections for lack of literacy skills.61 In 
a 2007 survey of employers in Washington 
State, about 60% reported difficulty in hir -
ing. They experienced less difficulty finding 
workers with adequate reading, writing, and 
math skills than with appropriate occupa -
tional, problem solving, teamwork, com -
munication, and adaptability skills, as well 
as positive work habits and a willingness to 
accept supervision.62
Evidence from the United Kingdom sup -
ports these findings. A 1998 survey of 4,000 
employers found that the four skills found 
most lacking in 16- to 24-year-olds were 
technical and practical skills, general com -
munication skills, customer handling skills, 
and teamwork skills.63 At the bottom of the 
list were numeracy and literacy skills. In a 
2002 survey of 4,000 employers in the Unit -
ed Kingdom, 23% of employers reported a 
significant number of their staff members 
were less than fully proficient at their jobs. 
Skill shortfalls were most common in com -
munication, teamwork, other technical and 
practical skills, customer handling, and 
problem solving, and least common in nu -
meracy and literacy.64
Consistent with these findings, the Con -
federation of British Industry defines em -
ployability as (1) values and attitudes com -
patible with the work, including a desire to 
learn, to apply that learning, to improve, 
and to take advantage of change; (2) basic 
skills (literacy and numeracy); (3) key skills 
(communication, application of numbers, in -
formation technology, improving one’s own 
learning and performance, working with others, problem solving) sufficient for the 
needs of the work; (4) other generic skills, 
such as modern language and customer ser -
vice skills; and (5) job-  specific skills and the 
ability to manage one’s own career.
An ethnographic approach provides some 
revealing examples of how skills are used 
in context and how nonacademic skills are 
often developed and used as part of a “com -
munity of practice.”65 In addition to formal 
knowledge, Nelson (1997) pointed out that 
workplaces require not only facts, princi -
ples, theories, and math and writing skills, 
but also informal knowledge embodied in 
heuristics, work styles, and contextualized 
understanding of tools and techniques. In 
her revealing case study of auto repair work -
ers, Nelson argued that social skills of new 
workers are very important for learning the 
informal knowledge of experienced work -
ers, as captured in stories, advice, and guid -
ed practice. For a more recent discussion, see 
García (2014). The Atlanta Federal Reserve 
(Jones, 2018) recently issued a comprehen -
sive assessment of workforce improvement 
strategies that include mentoring and fos -
tering social skills of prospective workers. 
This reflects the growing understanding of 
the importance of multiple skills in the labor 
market and highlights the need to measure 
them appropriately.
Differences in personality and preferences 
may explain some of the apparent puzzles 
concerning wage disparities between indi -
viduals and groups of individuals. Using 
Australian data, Cobb-Clark and Tan 
(2011) showed that sorting into occupa -
tions by gender is in part driven by differ -
ent sector-  specific returns to noncognitive 
skills for men and women. However, they 
found that the wage gap is largely driven 
by disparities for men and women within 
occupations.66 Caliendo, Cobb-Clark, and 
Uhlendorff (2015) explicitly modeled the 
job search process and allowed it to depend 
on an individual’s locus of control and other 
characteristics. Using data from a German 
survey of the newly unemployed, they found 
that people with a higher locus of control be -
lieve that expending effort in searching for 
a job is more productive. Accordingly, they 
search more intensely and have higher reser -
vation wages67 than those with a lower locus 