Soft skills, an essential travel companion

BarcelonaThe fifth study of the Barometer of Skills and Occupations of Catalonia by Pimec and the UOC highlights soft skills, soft skills that the labor market considers essential. The report details that up to 76.8% of job vacancies require mastery of some soft skill and up to 28% require mastery of some advanced digital skill.

In an increasingly digitalized and automated professional world, the labor market demands more human skills, such as teamwork and adapting to change. Self-management skills are those that allow individuals to understand and control their own capabilities and limitations in order to manage their work in different contexts. Social and communication skills include the ability to establish positive and productive interpersonal relationships at work. Reasoning skills, on the other hand, are cognitive skills that can be applied across different jobs, such as the processes of conceptualizing, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information.

The report updates information on the soft skills required for job vacancies. In 2024, these types of skills were present in 76.8% of vacancies, a figure that represents a 3.6% increase compared to previous data. This section includes different types of skills such as self-management and social, communication, and reasoning skills. The most requested in this chapter are adaptation to change (48.3%), teamwork (31.7%), time management (31.7%), creating solutions to problems (30.6%), teamwork principles (30.6%), assuming responsibility (27.9%), problem-solving (25.6%), presenting and (19.6%), and adjusting priorities (18.7%).

The fields with the highest demand in these areas are administration and law, engineering and construction, and science and mathematics. Furthermore, 6.6 percent of vacancies required green skills, which have grown by 24.5 percent. The most in-demand skills were corporate social responsibility (1.5%), environmental legislation (1.4%), and knowledge of ecosystems (0.9%).

The barometer allows you to search for the occupations with the most vacancies in each sector.The report highlights that in 2024, in the case of digital skills, IT and Microsoft Office knowledge were present in 57.5% of vacancies. Another section includes advanced digital skills, present in 28.5% of vacancies. These include computer programming (11.8%) and business ICT systems (11.2%), although skills related to cloud computing, digital transformation, automation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cybersecurity are also growing.

Skills associated with artificial intelligence (AI) are proliferating in multiple sectors and, although demand is still low, accelerated growth has been evident since 2021. "Right now, we have a great need to understand the context, to have tools to understand the phenomenon of artificial intelligence, of the internet," analyzes Miquel Àngel Prats, professor of Educational Technology at Blanquerna - Ramon Llull University.

The most requested profiles

The study finds that between 2018 and 2024 the labor market underwent changes due to factors such as COVID-19, the spread of artificial intelligence, and the demand for sustainability in companies. In this context, and when asked which occupations are most in demand by Catalan companies, the study finds that in 2024 the most sought-after profiles were technological, technical, administrative and commercial, and machinery operators.

The report highlights the dynamics of change in labor market demand that are being observed. In this sense, the report points out that the fact that there are many vacancies for a specific job does not always imply that demand is growing. For example, there is a high demand for software development, sales, administrative, and machinery operator profiles, but the demand is declining. This decline is attributed to various causes, such as economic uncertainty, the fall in investment in startups and the adoption of AI tools.

The 10 most in-demand occupations in 2024 are systems analyst (3.7%), research and development management (3.7%), software development (3%), engineering not elsewhere classified (2.8%), advertising and marketing professional (2.5%), and sales representative (2.2%), general office worker (2.1%), sales and marketing management (2.1%), and administrative and executive healthcare (2.1%).

In terms of territorial distribution, Barcelona continues to account for the majority of vacancies, although there was a slight decrease in the total between 2023 and 2024. The figure increases in Girona, Tarragona, and Lleida.