Ah, my apologies for not following up on this one until now. Thanks for bumping.
Skills only provide a bonus to the output for jobs and combat. So, if you're fighting an enemy with melee weapons, you'd get +9 to the damage output if your Melee Fighting skill was 9. Likewise, for jobs, you'd get +9 to logging a tree with a 9 Logging skill. This means, you are either doing more damage to an enemy, or complete a job faster.