We Didn’t Name the Problem: Employers Did

For years, the conversation about workforce readiness circled around the same frustration. Employers kept telling us that young people were showing up unprepared, not for technical reasons, but for human ones. They couldn’t communicate clearly under pressure. They struggled to collaborate across difference. They didn’t know how to adapt when things went sideways. And yet the education system had no shared language for any of it, no common way to define these capabilities, teach toward them, or signal when someone had actually built them.

That frustration is part of the Pathsmith™ origin story. 

From Conversation to Evidence

Before the pandemic, America Succeeds was already tracking a shift in what employers were asking for. The economy was moving fast. Job descriptions were evolving faster than curricula. The skills that determined whether someone thrived in a role were changing, but the systems designed to develop those skills were not keeping pace. We called it the “Age of Agility,” and we were trying to understand what it would take for education to respond.

Then the pandemic hit, and the calculus changed. It became clear that asking K-12 systems to fundamentally restructure themselves in the middle of a crisis was not realistic. But something else happened during that period that mattered: employers got more specific. Freed from the assumption that a degree credential was sufficient, they started articulating what they actually needed. Not just a college graduate. Not just someone with relevant coursework. Someone who could communicate across audiences, think critically when the data was incomplete, collaborate with people who saw the world differently, and show up consistently even when conditions were hard.

What they were describing, though few of them used the term, were durable skills. Skills that travel with a person from job to job, industry to industry, and decade to decade. Skills that don’t expire when technology changes. We started using that language deliberately, because “soft skills” had always undersold what these capabilities actually were. There is nothing soft about the ability to lead a team through uncertainty, or to communicate clearly when the stakes are high. These are essential human skills, and they deserved a name that reflected their importance. But naming them wasn’t enough. The field was full of frameworks that named things. What was missing was evidence.

That’s why we turned to Lightcast, which maintains the most comprehensive database of job postings in the world. We wanted to know whether the demand employers were describing in conversations matched what they were actually writing into job descriptions at scale. The answer was unambiguous. Across nearly 80 million job postings, eight of the ten most-requested skills were durable skills. 

That data changed the conversation. It moved durable skills from a philosophical argument about education’s purpose into an empirical argument about labor market demand. And it gave us the foundation to build something the field had never had: a shared, employer-validated framework for what these skills actually look like, what mastery looks like at every level, and how to teach toward them with intention.

Building the Framework

Developing Pathsmith™ was not a quick process. We convened subject matter experts from major employers across industries. We ran global validation surveys. We conducted a national feedback tour across twelve cities. We embedded equity review into every stage of development to ensure the framework reflected diverse learners and contexts, not just the most privileged. The result was a lexicon of ten core competency domains, seventy-four subskills, and four proficiency levels that describe observable, measurable behaviors rather than vague aspirations.

But we didn’t stop at early career. One of the most consistent pieces of feedback we heard from educators was that durable skills don’t start when a student enters the workforce. They begin developing in early childhood, and the systems designed to support them need to reflect that. So we extended the framework into a PK-16 Developmental Progression, covering twenty-four skills across the full learning continuum from approximately ages four to twenty-two. Each skill is mapped across five developmental levels with behavioral indicators educators can actually observe, and a crosswalk connects the PK-16 progression directly to our Early Career Rubric. Together, they create a continuous system from a child’s earliest learning environments to their first years on the job.

The inner ring of our Durable Skills Wheel captures the ten core domains from our early career research. The outer ring, built from Lightcast’s analysis of actual job posting language, maps the hundred terms employers use most often when signaling they want those skills. That outer ring was the breakthrough. It showed us that employers were already asking for durable skills constantly. They just weren’t using the same words educators were. Bridging that language gap is what makes a true talent pipeline possible.

The AI Question

None of this has become less urgent as AI has entered the picture. If anything, it has accelerated. When everyone has access to the same AI tools, the differentiation comes from the human capabilities those tools cannot replicate: the judgment to evaluate an AI output critically, the communication skills to explain its implications clearly, the character to decide when not to use it at all. The companies building at the frontier of this technology are not hiring for AI proficiency alone. They are hiring for adaptability, critical thinking, and the capacity to learn continuously as the technology evolves beneath them.

That is not a coincidence. It is a signal about what the future of work actually requires.

The education system has never been asked to do this work systematically. There has never been a shared language for durable skills that spans K-12, postsecondary, and the workforce. There have been lists, aspirations, and isolated efforts. But the infrastructure to develop these skills intentionally, assess them credibly, and signal them in ways employers actually trust has not existed.

That is what Pathsmith™ is built to be. Not another framework that sits in a binder. Infrastructure that makes durable skills teachable, measurable, and portable across every stage of a learner’s journey.

The employers already know what they need. The data has confirmed it. The remaining question is whether our education and workforce systems will build the systems to deliver it.