Employers’ demand for qualifications and skills: increased merit selection in Austria, 1985-2005

The paper attempts to empirically test skill demand on the Austrian labour market between 1985 and 2005 by making use of job advertisements. We analyze job advertisements covering a time span of 20 years. This allows us to examine whether there is a trend towards increased merit selection. Our empirical research is based on a content analysis of 975 newspaper job advertisements. We expand on the operationalization of education by looking at both educational level and field of study. Results indicate that jobs described in advertisements increasingly demanded various types of skill. Besides educational merits, other types of skills are also relevant in modern-day economies: social and personal skills. It is demonstrated that the driving force in changing demands is not only compositional change (with the expansion of high-skill demanding jobs), but also changes within occupational groups.