Soft skills statistics for 2026: the data hiring teams can trust

Soft skills statistics from 2024 to 2026 tell a consistent story: employers now rank people skills such as analytical thinking, resilience, communication and teamwork among their most important hiring criteria, most of them struggle to find those skills, and workers who have them get promoted faster. Every number on this page comes from a named survey or dataset published in the last two years, opened at the source.

TL;DR:

• Employers rank analytical thinking highest. The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 found 69% name it a core skill, followed by resilience at 67%.
• NACE's Job Outlook 2026 found 85% of employers look for teamwork on a resume, and 70% now use skills-based hiring.
• The gap persists: 69% of US employers struggle to find the talent they need, per ManpowerGroup's 2026 Talent Shortage Survey.
• People skills pay off. LinkedIn found communication, teamwork, problem solving and organization each tied to 11% faster promotions.
• 62% of hiring managers rate hard and soft skills as equally valuable, and 24% say soft skills matter more, per a 2025 ResumeTemplates survey.
• Stop quoting the "85% of job success comes from soft skills" claim. It traces back to a 1918 Carnegie Foundation report on engineering education.
• Measure one or two key people skills with scored evidence, such as a situational judgment test. AI makes resume claims less reliable.

What do soft skills statistics show in 2026?

Soft skills statistics in 2026 show three things. Employers rank people skills at the top of their wish lists, with 69% naming analytical thinking a core skill and 85% looking for teamwork on a resume. Most employers still struggle to find them: 69% of US employers report difficulty filling roles. And the skills pay off, with specific people skills tied to 11% faster promotions.

The rest of this page breaks those headline numbers down by source, so you can pick the ones that fit your business case and check each one yourself. If you need the basics first, start with our guide to soft skills and come back for the data.

Which soft skills statistics matter most for hiring teams?

The soft skills statistics that matter most for hiring teams are the ones from large, recent employer surveys: WEF's Future of Jobs Report 2025, NACE's Job Outlook 2026, ManpowerGroup's 2026 Talent Shortage Survey and LinkedIn's own member data. The table below lists the headline figure from each, with the year it was published.

How much do employers value people skills in 2026?

Employers value people skills highly enough to change how they hire. Seventy percent of employers now use skills-based hiring, up from 65% a year earlier, and 71% of them use it at least half the time, according to NACE's Job Outlook 2026. The approach shows up most in interviewing (87%) and screening (65%).

Grades are losing ground at the same time. Only 42% of employers still screen candidates by GPA, down from 73% in 2019. Employers are swapping a proxy for direct evidence of what a person can do, and people skills are a big part of that evidence. For the wider trend, see our roundup of skills-based hiring statistics.

• Teamwork tops the resume check: NACE's Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update found that 85% of employers look for teamwork skills on a resume, with problem-solving and communication close behind. More than half of employers listed 10 or more skills they want to see.
• Hard and soft skills share the stage: A December 2025 ResumeTemplates survey of 1,005 US hiring managers, reported by HR Dive, found that 62% rate hard and soft skills as equally valuable, 24% say soft skills matter more and 14% say hard skills matter more.
• Few hiring managers choose one over the other: Read together, the two surveys say the question is no longer "hard or soft" but how to check both with the same rigor. Our guide to hard skills vs soft skills covers how the two fit in one process.

Which human skills do employers rank highest?

Employers rank analytical thinking highest, followed by resilience, flexibility and agility, and then leadership and social influence. In the World Economic Forum's survey of more than 1,000 employers covering 14 million workers, 69% named analytical thinking a core skill for their workforce, 67% named resilience and 61% named leadership and social influence.

Creative thinking (57%), motivation and self-awareness (52%) and empathy and active listening (50%) complete most of the top 10 in the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025. Only one entry in the top seven, technological literacy (51%), is a technical skill.

Other 2025 and 2026 sources rank the same cluster near the top, with small differences in wording:

Job ads tell the same story. A 2025 analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland of more than 2,300 skills across 600-plus occupations found communication requested in 34.2% of all US job ads, customer service in 26.9% and management in 23%. Sales, operations and leadership each appeared in about 15%.

How big is the skills gap employers report?

The skills gap employers report is large and slow to close. ManpowerGroup's 2026 US Talent Shortage Survey of more than 6,000 employers found that 69% have difficulty finding the talent they need, only slightly better than 71% the year before. The same employers named professionalism, communication and teamwork as the most important soft skills they look for.

The gap also blocks business plans. In the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025, 63% of employers named skills gaps as the biggest barrier to changing their business between 2025 and 2030. LinkedIn's 2025 Workplace Learning Report adds that 49% of L&D and talent professionals say their executives worry employees lack the skills to deliver the business strategy.

One popular gap statistic needs a correction. The line that "nearly 3 in 4 employers struggle to find graduates with the soft skills they need" is often credited to SHRM in 2024, but the SHRM article that reported it was published in October 2019. Use the ManpowerGroup 2026 figure instead when you need a current number.

What do people skills do for careers and pay?

People skills speed up careers and lift pay. LinkedIn's analysis of members promoted internally between 2020 and 2023, published in February 2024, found that people with both hard and soft skills were promoted 8% faster than people who listed only hard skills. Organization, teamwork, problem solving and communication were each tied to 11% faster promotions, and leadership to 10%.

The pay effect shows up over whole careers. Research summarized in Harvard Business Review in August 2025 analyzed about 70 million job transitions across more than 1,000 occupations. The authors found that foundational skills such as collaboration and adaptability shape how fast people build advanced skills later.

Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge, covering the same study, reports that under some conditions nearly 80% of the wage premium for specialized skills depends on the foundational skills underneath them. For hiring teams, the lesson is simple: a candidate's people skills predict how quickly they will grow into the next version of the role, not only how they fit today.

How are employers investing in training for these skills?

Employers are investing heavily in upskilling, and people skills are a large part of the plan. The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that 85% of employers plan to prioritize upskilling their workforce, and estimates that 59 of every 100 workers will need training by 2030. Half of workers (50%) have already completed some training, up from 41% in 2023.

Leadership is the most common skill program. In LinkedIn's 2025 Workplace Learning Report, 71% of organizations offer leadership training, the most common career development practice, and 91% of L&D professionals say continuous learning matters more than ever for career success.

• Managers are the weak link: Only 15% of employees told LinkedIn that their manager helped them build a career plan in the past six months, down 5 points from 2024.
• Retention drives the budget: 88% of organizations are concerned about retention, and learning opportunities are their top retention strategy.
• Training does not replace hiring: WEF found that 70% of employers expect to hire staff with new skills, alongside training the people they have.

Pro tip: Use training data and hiring data together in your business case. If your L&D team spends on communication or leadership courses, measure those same skills at hiring with the same rubric, so you can see whether new hires arrive with them or need them taught.

How does AI change the value of human skills?

AI raises the value of human skills rather than replacing them. The WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025 lists AI and big data as the fastest-growing skills to 2030, but creative thinking, resilience, flexibility and agility, and curiosity and lifelong learning rise right alongside them. Employers want both: people who can use AI and people who can judge, adapt and work with others.

• Soft skills dominate LinkedIn's fastest risers: LinkedIn's Skills on the Rise 2025 list placed conflict mitigation second and adaptability third, and 7 of the top 10 skills were soft skills.
• AI literacy joins the shortage list: ManpowerGroup's 2026 survey named AI literacy among the five hard skills US employers find most difficult to source, next to the people skills they rate most important.
• Skill churn is slowing but still high: WEF expects 39% of workers' core skills to change or become outdated by 2030, down from 44% in its 2023 edition and 57% in 2020.

For recruiters, AI also changes how candidates present people skills. Polished cover letters and resumes are easy to generate, so self-reported communication or teamwork tells you less every year. Evidence from a structured task carries more weight than a claim.

Which popular soft skills statistics should you stop quoting?

Four popular soft skills statistics should be retired or clearly dated: the 85% career success claim, SHRM's "3 in 4 employers" figure, McKinsey's 2018 growth projection and the ASTD training spend figure. Each still circulates on stats pages, and each falls apart when a skeptical CFO opens the source.

• "85% of job success comes from soft skills." The Carnegie Foundation's own FAQ says the figures were extrapolated from Charles Riborg Mann's "A Study of Engineering Education", a 1918 report, pages 106 to 107. The foundation does not present it as current research, and the Harvard and Stanford names often attached to it point back to the same 1918 source, according to the National Soft Skills Association.
• "Nearly 3 in 4 employers struggle to find soft skills (SHRM, 2024)." The SHRM article is from October 2019. Use ManpowerGroup's 2026 figure of 69% instead.
• "Demand for social and emotional skills will grow 26% by 2030 (McKinsey)." The McKinsey Global Institute projection dates from 2018, before the pandemic and generative AI. Quote it only as a long-range forecast, with its year.
• "Only 27.6% of training dollars go to soft skills." The ASTD figure behind it covers US training spend in 2010. Current training data from LinkedIn and WEF is a better fit for a 2026 budget.

Key takeaway: The verified 2024 to 2026 numbers make a stronger case than the myths. Analytical thinking at 69%, teamwork on 85% of resume checks and 11% faster promotions all hold up when someone clicks the source.

How can hiring teams turn these statistics into a measurement plan?

Hiring teams can turn these findings into a practical measurement plan. Start by identifying the people skills each role requires and defining one piece of evidence that two reviewers can assess consistently. The survey findings show what employers value, while the gaps highlight why resumes and unstructured interviews often fail to reveal those skills. A structured assessment process helps bridge that gap.

Pick the one or two skills that matter most in the role and measure those well before adding more. A situational judgment test covers teamwork and judgment, and a communication test covers written communication. For a step-by-step method, see our guide on assessing soft skills with skills assessments.

Testlify supports this with 3,500+ tests, including situational judgment, communication and teamwork tests, plus AI interviews by video, voice or chat that score every answer against the same criteria. Each candidate report shows a per-skill breakdown, and the hiring decision stays with your team. For interview prompts, use our soft skills interview question bank.

Ready to measure the skills behind the statistics?

Pick the one people skill that predicts success in your hardest-to-fill role and add a scored assessment for it to your next shortlist. Start a 7-day free trial of Testlify, no credit card required, or book a demo to see situational judgment tests and AI interviews on your own roles.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)