Expertise
Verónica Escudero is a Senior Economist and Head of the Skills, Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) and Policy Evaluation Unit in the Research and Statistics Department of the International Labour Organization (ILO). She is a labour economist with a PhD in Economics and over 17 years of experience in policy-oriented research and advisory work, specialising in the analysis and evaluation of labour market and social policies and in skills dynamics in labour markets.
She led the development of the ILO’s 2026 organisation-wide flagship report, Lifelong Learning and Skills for the Future, overseeing its analytical framework, research programme and production. The report examines how technological innovation, the green transition and demographic change are transforming skills needs and labour markets, and argues for lifelong learning as a strategic policy priority. It also documents that access to quality learning remains limited and unequally distributed, particularly among disadvantaged workers, and sets out a roadmap for building more inclusive and effective lifelong learning systems that support decent work, resilience and adaptation to a changing world of work.
Her research focuses on two broad, policy-relevant areas. The first examines the effectiveness of labour market and social policies, with a particular focus on active labour market policies, training and the integration of income and employment support. Her work uses experimental and quasi-experimental methods to identify what works, for whom and under which circumstances, and examines how policy design and implementation shape employment outcomes, job quality and social conditions, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Her work also involves adapting empirical approaches to settings with limited or imperfect data.
A second strand of her research examines skills dynamics and labour market transitions. Using large-scale online vacancy and applicant data, occupational information and natural language processing methods, she develops novel measures of skills demand, skill bundles and job amenities, and investigates how skills shape employment transitions, wages and job quality.
Her broader research agenda studies how major structural transformations – particularly digitalisation and emerging technologies, the green transition and demographic change – are reshaping jobs and skills, and the role of skills and labour market policies in enabling workers to adapt to, benefit from and be protected through these transformations. Recent work includes the development of new methods to measure green employment, green tasks, skills demand and job quality using big data.
Her research has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals and major ILO research reports, alongside a range of policy-oriented publications and research commentary. Her work consistently aims to bridge academic research and policy by generating rigorous evidence that can inform national policy formulation and address complex labour market and social challenges.
She was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA) at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2021 to 2023, and is an IZA Research Fellow and a Fellow of the Global Labor Organization (GLO). She holds a PhD in Economics from the Paris School of Economics and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).