Fig. 4: China’s workforce skill space.

a A skill space addresses the relationships between skill pairs. The edges represent skill-pair proximities that are the minimum probability of the corresponding pair co-occurring in the same occupation. Node colors represent the skill categories defined by O*NET and node sizes reflect the betweenness centrality. We name the cluster on the left “socio-cognitive” skill cluster and the right “sensory-physical” skill cluster, given the types of skills that constitute them. Three skills Judging the Quality of Things, Mathematics, and Estimating the Quantifiable Characteristics of Product, Event or Information, are highlighted in black squares, as they have the greatest betweenness centrality in the network indicating their transition positions between the two clusters. Mathematics is a complementary skill to Science, Physics and Programming which are highlighted in the black triangles. b Four occupations’ positions in the skill space. The darker nodes the more important those skills to the corresponding occupations. c The socio-cognitive scores of 6 major occupation groups. Department and Enterprise Heads and Technicians and Professionals have greater socio-cognitive scores than the other occupation groups.