Complementary skills are the OECD's name for teamwork, autonomy, problem solving, creative thinking, communication, collaboration and emotional intelligence: the skills that sit alongside foundational and ICT skills and make a worker effective in a digital economy. The label comes from the OECD's July 2026 paper Skills in the AI age, which uses it for the third of three groups people need.
The answer, in one line
The OECD's term, in its July 2026 paper Skills in the AI age, for skills such as teamwork, autonomy, problem solving, creative thinking, communication, collaboration and emotional intelligence.
Definition#
Complementary skills: in the OECD's usage, skills such as teamwork, autonomy, problem solving, creative thinking, communication, collaboration and emotional intelligence that enable high-performance work practices and a strong ability to continue learning. The OECD sets them beside foundational skills and ICT skills. The term is the OECD's and not a SuperSkills coinage.
Three groups, and where this one sits#
The paper divides what individuals need to thrive in digital societies into foundational skills such as numeracy and reading, ICT skills ranging from basic computer use to programming and AI skills, and complementary skills. It says that combined with a minimum level of ICT skill, complementary skills can significantly raise an individual's effectiveness and productivity in digital environments. The word "complementary" carries the argument: the skills are valued for what they do alongside technology, not in place of it.
Two types inside the group#
The paper reports that the OECD Skills for 2030 project identifies two kinds. Meta-cognitive skills include critical thinking, creative thinking, learning-to-learn and self-regulation. Social and emotional skills include empathy, self-efficacy, responsibility and collaboration. Those lists overlap with the seven-item list in the paper's main definition without matching it, so a reader quoting the term should name which list they mean.
What the vacancy data show, and what they cannot#
The paper draws on Green (2024), who used Lightcast job-advertisement data for ten OECD countries. In occupations with high exposure to AI, which made up about a third of the vacancies in the sample, 72 per cent of vacancies asked for at least one management skill and 67 per cent for at least one business-process skill, and over half asked for at least one social, emotional or digital skill. The paper names management, business processes and complementary skills as the most demanded groups there.
These are counts of what employers write in advertisements. They show that complementary skills are asked for, and asked for often, in exposed jobs. They do not show that candidates holding them are paid more, hired faster or protected from displacement, and the paper does not claim they do. The same paper notes that high exposure to AI does not imply imminent automation.
Three names for one neighbourhood#
The OECD says complementary, the World Economic Forum says core skills, and popular writing says human or soft skills. The boundaries differ. The OECD list puts creative thinking and problem solving inside complementary skills and treats AI skills as a separate, rarer group: the paper puts workers with AI skills at about 1 per cent of the workforce. Where this site reports a figure about one of these groups, the list behind the figure is stated beside it for that reason.
Key sources
- OECD (2026). Skills in the AI age. OECD Artificial Intelligence Papers, No. 60, 8 July 2026.
Explainer · SS-2026-440 · Graded against the published rubric · How I use AI here · 1 institutional synthesis
Hirji, R. (2026). What are complementary skills?. The SuperSkills evidence base, SS-2026-440. https://thesuperskills.com/research/what-are-complementary-skills. Last reviewed 2 November 2026.
An evidence review by Rahim Hirji, not peer-reviewed research. For a material claim, cite the underlying study as well; every study here carries its own permanent link.
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