The survey by Future Skills Scotland, which is intended to provide labour market intelligence on jobs and careers, covered 8,000 workplaces and 320,000 employees.
It drew a distinction between job vacancies that cannot be filled because of a lack of the right skills and gaps which arise when employees do not have the skills to do their jobs.
The former represents 12,000 posts and the latter 50,000 - or 3.5 per cent of the 2.1 million people who are in employment in Scotland.
Ministers remain determined to press ahead with a pound;40 million investment to give all pupils an enterprise-based education, based in part on the assumption that they do not have the right attitudes and skills.
