Dive Brief:

• Nurses, software developers and truck drivers were among the 10 most frequently posted jobs on Monster during the first half of 2018, according to a report from the job-board site.
• An aging population is driving the demand for nurses, and the growth in e-commerce has increased the demand for truck drivers, retail sales supervisors and others, Monster said. The U.S. cities with the highest number of job postings on Monster were New York City, Boston and Washington, D.C. on the east coast; Chicago in the Midwest region; Los Angeles and San Francisco on the west coast; and Dallas and Houston in the south.
• Despite the technical skills jobs require, employers also expect soft skills from workers, Monster said. The five soft skills most frequently listed in Monster job posts were: having the ability to speak and write well, being detail oriented, having integrity, being a self-starter and having the ability to work independently.

Dive Insight:

Monster's hiring data mirrors the storylines playing out in industries from healthcare to technology to shipping. The common thread is that all employers are competing for a limited number of highly-skilled workers while facing a low unemployment rate.

The demand for healthcare and tech workers is a particularly interesting case study for this problem, as both professions reflect the strong job growth in the healthcare and technology industries. A separate report from CareerCast indicated that both would be the among the most difficult job categories to fill in coming years. Also, it's not just about evaluating the rise and fall of certain occupations, but how those occupations are changing. Future shifts in the employee-employer relationship could provide a crucial test for the way HR operates in high-growth fields.

Technical skills can be taught via training, but soft skills — reliability, honesty, credibility and diligence, for example — are a bit harder to evaluate. But employers can still develop effective employee development programs around important interpersonal skills like leadership and communication.