"Minnesota's Most Marketable Skills: The contribution of occupational skill requirements to wages and employment growth" Minnesota Department of
Economic Security
Summary This study had two primary objectives:
The methodological approach involved using factor analytic techniques to identify reduced skill and ability sets. We successfully reduced the number of abilities from 46 O*NET characteristics to 12 ability factors and skills from 42 O*NET characteristics to 14 skill factors. A multinomial logit model as used to estimate the relationship between each skill and wages/employment growth. Regressions controlled for job zone to obtain the effect of each skill/knowledge/ability requirement net of educational requirements. Eighteen factors, categorized into five
skill clusters (fundamental, technical/scientific, managerial/administrative,
human service, and medical), were found to significantly contribute to
marketability.
How is O*NET being used? Skill factors were derived using the O*NET
database. O*NET importance and level data were used in regressions to determine
coefficient estimates.
Who is your target population? The target population for the Most Marketable
Skills Project was educational planners, workforce development policy makers,
educators and learners.
What kind of results is O*NET helping you to achieve? O*NET helped us characterize the contributions
of worker skills to worker productivity.
What are the related program initiatives? The reduced skill set derived from O*NET
KSAs will be applied in career information products such as Minnesota's
Internet System for Education and Employment Knowledge (ISEEK) for use
in self-assessment instruments. It may also form the basis for future surveys
that attempt to identify skill requirements to enable comparability with
existing O*NET occupations.
Is your product, program or service available for others to use? Information developed and learned during
the project has been incorporated into a report that is available on the
Web (http://www.mnworkforcecenter.org/lmi/pub1/mms/). Results were also
incorporated into an article entitled Skills for the 21st Century that
identifies key skills that are associated with either high-paying or high-growth
jobs. This is available in *.pdf format (http://www.mnworkforcecenter.org/lmi/pub1/mms4.pdf).
To order paper copies, please contact the Minnesota Department of Economic
Security, Research and Planning Office, 390 North Roberts Street, Saint
Paul, MN 55101 or call 651-282-2714.
What other strategies make your product, program or service successful? The sheer volume of information in O*NET
and its high technical level are indicative of its comprehensive content
model. However, not all users demand the complete O*NET descriptor set.
This project addressed this issue by using factor analytic techniques to
identify a smaller, more intuitive set of descriptors that maintained comparability
with the original O*NET taxonomy.
Do you have other pertinent information? A limiting factor in this study was the
lack of data to identify within-occupation skill changes. The MDES will
be doing a follow-up study for the Short Term Projections Consortium that
will address this and other methodological issues associated with projecting
future skill demands.
Contact Information: Marc Breton
|