Bringing Durable Skills to Life in the Workforce
8 of the 10 most-requested skills in job postings are durable skills. Over 60% of Gen Z employees leave their first jobs within a year, not for technical failures, but for how they communicated, collaborated, and showed up. And 59% of workers will need reskilling by 2030 as AI reshapes what every role requires.
The organizations building resilient, high-performing workforces are investing in the human skills that hold up under pressure, across roles, and through change.
Pathsmith® gives you the framework to do that with intention.
Validated against 82 million job postings and created with input from 800+ employers, the Pathsmith® durable skills framework gives workforce leaders a common language for the skills that drive performance, retention, and career mobility. Pathsmith® helps organizations:
A visual overview of 10 durable skill domains and the subskills within each, grounded in what employers actually ask for. The inner ring shows the 10 core skill domains; the outer ring maps 100 common job-posting keywords to the framework.
A free, downloadable overview of the Pathsmith® early career framework, including definitions for all 74 skills and rubric summaries for each domain at the applying level. A great place to start.
The complete Pathsmith® Early Career Performance Rubric, with definitions at all four proficiency levels: emerging, developing, applying, and exceeding. Available through a Pathsmith® license.
In 2021, America Succeeds partnered with Lightcast to publish The High Demand for Durable Skills, making the case that durable skills were essential across every industry. Four years later, the data shows the demand has only accelerated.
Our 2025 update, Durable by Design, analyzed 76 million job postings and found that 76% of all roles now require at least one durable skill, and 47% call for three or more, a 13-point increase since our original report. Eight of the ten most-requested skills in today’s job postings are durable skills. Human-centric capabilities like communication, leadership, and critical thinking are outpacing technical demands across industries, including fields historically dominated by technical expertise like engineering, finance, and computing.
The takeaway is clear: durable skills are no longer a differentiator. They are the baseline.
The Pathsmith® framework is embedded across a growing ecosystem of partners bringing durable skills to life in workplaces, training programs, and talent systems. Here are some of the ways organizations can access Pathsmith®-powered tools and support today.
Nimo’s AI-powered simulations place employees in realistic, high-stakes workplace scenarios, practicing skills like conflict resolution, feedback conversations, and leading under pressure. At the heart of every simulation is the Pathsmith® framework, ensuring that what gets practiced is grounded in what employers consistently say matters most. Their approach reduces new-hire ramp time by 60%.
When Northwest Lineman College needed a shared language for leadership development across a growing organization, they turned to Pathsmith™. Using a four-step model built around the framework, they moved from vague descriptions of strong leadership to observable, measurable competencies that leaders and employees could actually use. The result: a scalable development system embedded into everyday work, not bolted on top of it.
