Employer Expectations of 21st-Century High School Graduates: Analyzing Online Job Advertisements

Abstract

Individuals with a high school education represent the largest subset of the U.S. workforce. However, little is known about the employer expectations of these individuals, particularly in the area of soft skills—also known as 21st-century skills. Online job advertisements offer useful data for examining these expectations, as they may supplement employer survey data and reflect actual recruitment practices. Our analysis of 68,505 online job advertisements suggests that employers hold generally lower expectations for the soft skills of high school–educated individuals than they do for postsecondary-educated individuals. However, employer expectations for two soft skills—professionalism and customer service skills—appear to be substantially higher for high school–educated individuals than for postsecondary-educated individuals. Additional results highlight similarities and differences within the high school–educated workforce across nine workplace industries. We discuss the implications of these results not only for high school–educated individuals and the organizations that employ them but also for practitioners and educators charged with assessing and providing training for these skills.