"Middle skills,” loosely defined, are those learned between a high school diploma and a college bachelor degree.  More precisely, middle skills are those skills needed for high-paying,  high-tech jobs in manufacturing, medical, computer, and other industries going unfilled, even as we emerge from an economic recession.  More precisely yet, middle skills are those hard and soft skills of employees needed by local employers to perform high-tech tasks.

About 69 million technicians – roughly 48% of the work force – have middle-skills jobs.  This according to the Harvard Business Review article titled Who Can Fix the "Middle-Skills” Gap? by T. Kochan, D. Finegold, and P. Osterman.  Formerly, upward-mobile youth played by the rules and went to college in order to get ahead economically.  But the skills landscape changed from needing a bachelor or higher degree to one of needing middle skills consisting of both hard and soft technical skills, such as team working, ethics, problem solving, and others.

Lesson-up.net provides lesson plans on these middle skills.