Vocational experts evaluate transferable skills, labor market availability, and residual functional capacity to determine what work a claimant can perform and at what earnings. They provide the foundation for lost earning capacity calculations.
Labor market surveys support the analysis.
Alternative Names:
Vocational Expert, Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor
Why it Matters?
The vocational opinion drives the economic damages calculation, which makes it the more productive target than the economist who merely applies the vocational assumptions. Where the vocational expert assumed total disability without a functional capacity evaluation, or ignored transferable skills and available accommodations, the entire earnings projection rests on that assumption. Local labor market data is the objective check on availability claims.
Frequently Confused with
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
Why target the vocational expert rather than the economist?
What is the objective check?
