The ground beneath the American workforce is shifting.

AI is automating once-essential tasks, industries are evolving faster than education can keep pace, and the definition of career readiness has changed from “ready to go on day one” to “ready to adapt on day one.”

A new State of Learning and Readiness report found that 70% of U.S. workers feel unprepared for today’s workforce. And they’re right to feel it. The world of work is changing faster than ever before.

At America Succeeds, we believe the key to thriving in this new reality isn’t just learning new technologies; it’s strengthening the durable human skills that technology can’t replace. These are the skills that power careers and communities: communication, critical thinking, teamwork, adaptability, and leadership. They’re the future-proof capabilities that make us human, and they deserve to be recognized as such.

Here’s why it’s time to stop calling them “soft skills,” and start calling them durable skills.

1. Alignment Starts with a Shared Lexicon

“Soft skills” sounds harmless, even casual. But the term obscures the urgency of the challenge before us. As automation accelerates and new technologies redefine work, skills like adaptability, creativity, and collaboration are becoming non-negotiable.

Our research, spanning more than 80 million job postings, shows that 8 of the 10 most in-demand skills are durable skills. And yet, education systems rarely teach them explicitly, and workforce programs struggle to assess or validate them consistently.

Without a shared lexicon for these essential human capabilities, we risk continuing to talk past one another, leaving students, workers, and employers misaligned in a rapidly changing economy.

It’s time to name them clearly and value them fully.

2. Educators Need to Be Empowered to Prioritize Durable Skills

We often hear from school and district leaders who agree that durable skills matter. But they’re also responsible for meeting academic standards, improving teacher retention, building school culture, managing limited resources, and so much more.

The reality is that leaders don’t have the luxury of choosing one over the other. Academic achievement and durable skills development are mutually reinforcing, not competing goals.

Through our Research Practice Collaborative, we have seen what it looks like in action when students learn how to lead a team, give and receive feedback, adapt to change, and solve complex problems by design, not by chance.

When we stop thinking about these skills as “soft” and instead do the important work of integrating them into lessons, projects, and real-world experiences, we prepare students not just for their first job, but for every job that follows.

3. Employers Need Better Tools to Recognize These Skills

Employers consistently tell us: “We’ll hire the lowest-ranked technical candidate with durable skills over the top-ranked one without them.” Yet, most job applicants still lack validated ways to demonstrate these abilities, and most companies lack the tools to measure them.

As we move toward skills-based hiring, durable skills must become visible, measurable, and verifiable. That means we need new systems for assessment, upskilling, and recognition that prioritize how people think, collaborate, and grow, not just what technical tools they know today.

We are already seeing exciting work on this front, with innovators like Nimo that have built AI-powered simulations to help learners practice and strengthen essential durable skills in immersive, real-world scenarios.

When we bridge the gap between education and employment with a shared understanding of and language for durable skills, we can help every learner and earner thrive in an economy defined by constant change.

The Future of Work Runs on Durable Skills

The term “soft skills” was coined by the U.S. Army in the late 1960s to describe skills that required little to no interaction with machines. Ironically, as artificial intelligence reshapes nearly every job, the opposite is true today, durable skills have become the very foundation for working with machines.

There’s nothing “soft” about the skills that power leadership, creativity, and innovation. They are the most enduring and essential capabilities we have. If we want learners and earners to thrive, our education and workforce systems must align around the skills employers actually need, because the future of work will belong to those who can learn, adapt, and lead through change, not just react to it.

Tim Taylor is the co-founder and president of America Succeeds, a national nonprofit that works at the intersection of education and workforce development to advance economic mobility through research, advocacy, partnerships, and the Pathsmith™ Durable Skills Framework.