Skill Demand and Wages: Evidence From Linked Vacancy Data.

This study provides new evidence on skill requirements in the labor market and shows to what extent skill demand is associated with wages and vacancy duration. In a sample of more than 1.5 million job postings administered by the Austrian public employment service, I identify the most common skill requirements mentioned in job descriptions. Accounting for a broad set of detailed job characteristics, there exists a robust association between the number of skill requirements and wages. In particular, jobs with many skill requirements pay substantially higher wages. While I estimate large effects for managerial and analytical skills, associations with most soft skills are small. Employers also need longer to fill vacancies with many skill requirements. Robustness tests show that measurement error is unlikely to explain these results and that the estimates can be replicated using vacancy postings from another job board. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]