Do soft-skills courses pay for individuals? Evidence from German matched data

Abstract Soft skills are widely promoted as levers for productivity and as enablers for digital and green transitions. Linking soft-skills training courses with German employer–employee records for 2010–2020, we track 5,439 full-time workers, including 549 participants in non-formal soft-skills training typically financed by employers. A staggered event-study design finds no post-training changes in daily wages, span of control, leadership status, or job satisfaction for up to three years. In Germany’s compressed-wage setting, where firms hold considerable monopsony power, this pattern is consistent with two interpretations: either these courses produce relatively small productivity effects, or firms capture most of any productivity gains rather than sharing them through higher pay. We discuss how portable Individual Learning Accounts and targeted subsidies could, in principle, strengthen worker returns, while acknowledging that more evidence on productivity effects is needed before drawing firm policy conclusions. JEL codes: J24; J28; J31; M53; I26