As technology like generative AI reshapes the workplace, it’s easy to assume that pursuing greater technical competence will help ensure a long and lucrative career. Additionally, by this logic, firms should be searching for those with specialized knowledge when seeking to fill entry level roles amid a tough market. But according to our new research, foundational skills—like collaboration, mathematical thinking, and adaptability—may prove much more important for both individuals and companies.

In our new study, we analyzed large-scale U.S. data on over 1,000 occupations across industries from 2005 to 2019, including 70 million job transitions, capturing hundreds of skills. We organized skills into foundational skills (including reading comprehension, basic math skills, and the ability to work well in teams) and more specialized, advanced skills (for example, competence with blockchain). We examined how people’s skills changed and developed over time, and over the course of their careers.

We found that those who scored highly on basic skills were more likely to earn higher wages throughout their careers, move into more advanced roles, learn specialized skills more quickly, and were more resilient to industry changes. The presence and development of foundational skills didn’t just make workers more competitive for entry level jobs—they determined how far they could climb the career ladder.

Foundational Skills Help Raise a Worker’s Ceiling

To help leaders understand the full value of these skills, we also examined the ways they shape long-term performance, adaptability, and advancement. Our study found that people with broad, strong foundational skills, including reading comprehension, basic math, and communications skills, tend to learn faster and master more complex abilities over time.

Think of the NBA draft. Teams don’t always pick the top college scorers. Instead, they look for players with high potential—those with the right foundations like speed, agility, ball control, positional sense, and shooting form. These players may not shine on day one, but they often develop into stars because their foundation gives them room to grow.

The same logic applies in the workplace. Some firms, like Jane Street Capital, famously hire people for their raw quantitative ability—not because they already know how to trade derivatives, but because they have the foundational math skills to learn fast and go far.

Of course, not every organization bets on potential. Startups, for example, may favor candidates with job-ready expertise, since they need people who can contribute immediately. In other cases, firms in low-trust or high-turnover environments tend to deprioritize foundational skills because they don’t expect long-term retention.

Still, for companies thinking beyond the next quarter, foundational skills matter. They shape a person’s growth path—and their long-term ceiling. But there are reasons beyond individuals’ performance for firms to consider fundamental skills.

These Skills Provide Flexibility in a Fast-Changing World

Our study found that workers with a broad range of foundational skills were more adaptable to industry changes. This adaptability is especially crucial as specialized skills rise and fall with surprising speed.

For example, Adobe Flash was once the gold standard for interactive web content, supporting a whole generation of developers. But when Flash was discontinued and browsers phased it out, only those who could pivot to HTML5 and JavaScript remained in demand. More recently, niche technical skills like Hadoop engineering and blockchain development have experienced steep rises and falls. HackerRank’s 2025 Developer Skills Report lists Hadoop among the fastest-declining skills, and LinkedIn data show blockchain-related job postings and developer activity have dropped by over 40% in just one year as investment and interest shifted toward AI.

These rapid cycles are no longer rare. Researchers estimate that the “half-life” of technical skills—the time it takes for half of what you know to become outdated—has dropped from about 10 years in the 1980s to four years today, and may soon fall below two.

Specialized skills can spike and vanish this quickly, but our findings suggest that the people who ride out each wave shared the same toolkit: strong abilities to problem-solve, clear communication styles, and the ability to work well with teams. These core strengths help workers relearn faster, let companies redeploy talent without starting from scratch, and ultimately anchor performance when the next technology arrives. In a world of constant disruption, organizations should pay even closer attention to their employees’ foundational skills—because those are what make long-term adaptability possible.