Effects of Aggressive Masking and Distancing Policies on Kids’ Future Workforce Performance

There’s little evidence that aggressive masking policies are generally sound COVID policies for kids, and some evidence they actually harm kids.  Adding to the risks of harm to kids are the effects of these policies on the development of what are called “non-cognitive” skills -- like working well with others, persuading and negotiating, and perceiving and understanding others’ reactions.

Of course, cognitive skills are and will continue to be vitally important work skills.  But the American Enterprise Institute recently published a report, Minding Our Workforce: The Role of Noncognitive Skills in Career Success, detailing the increasing importance of noncognitive skills in the future workforce, in which computers and robots will do more routine mechanical tasks, but humans will need to conduct the social interactions with customers.

As the authors point out in various charts and graphs, since the 1980’s, social and service skills have already become much more important job skill requirements, with high social and high math abilities’ becoming a most valuable combination.

Both cognitive and noncognitive skills have also become increasingly associated with higher earnings.

The authors of the AEI report cite a 2016 study in which the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project concluded that over the past 30 years, American jobs “have shifted dramatically toward tasks requiring noncognitive skills.” In particular, Brookings researchers found, “As advances in computer technology have continued to automate job functions, routine tasks have been de-emphasized,” while jobs that involved “working with or for people [have become] substantially more important.”

As the authors of the AEI report state: “the demand for workers to perform routine tasks has dropped dramatically since 1980. In the post-COVID-19 era, which some scholars say could accelerate the trend toward automation, demand for unskilled labor will likely fall yet more.”

Yet, oddly, the AEI report never mentions aggressive COVID-related masking and social distancing polices, which are being applied here in the U.S. to a greater extent than they’re being applied in much of the rest of the world, and the potential impact of those policies on the development of kids’ noncognitive skills going forward.  That’s a glaring omission, considering COVID-related masking and social distancing policies are being applied in more or less aggressive ways in different parts of the country, which we can expect will lead to more or less negative impacts of those policies on the development of noncognitive skills, and the future earnings related to them, depending on where kids are growing up now.  In the future, those who were allowed to have more maskless social interaction will likely fare better in the future workforce, and others less well.  Who will be to blame for the resulting disparities in income and wealth?

Whatever one’s views on the risks of death or serious injury from COVID to kids, one has to factor in the risks to kids of frequent masking requirements and social distancing.  Those risks are far from zero, and they will disproportionately negatively affect kids who already had problems interacting with others.  The less experience kids get reading other people’s faces to accurately gauge their emotions (so they can interact with them appropriately), or the less experience they get dealing with or speaking with other kids, the fewer noncognitive skills they’ll have in the future, when, as the AEI report shows, it seems they’ll need them most.