Expertise
Vocational Economist Expert Witness Services
A vocational economist quantifies what an injury, a wrongful termination, or a death cost someone in earnings over the remainder of a working life. Themis Expert Witness places vetted vocational and economic experts on matters throughout California, Washington, and Oregon, and Dr. Alvaro Alban, MD, MBA reviews their work — supplying the parallel medical opinion on functional capacity when the case has a clinical dimension.
What does a vocational economist expert witness do?
A vocational economist measures what an injury, termination, or death cost a person in earnings. The expert assesses residual employability and transferable skills, surveys the relevant labor market, projects worklife expectancy, and reduces the resulting future losses to present value in a report counsel can put before a jury.
The analysis runs in two stages, and they are frequently performed by two people. The vocational side asks what work the person can still do: education, prior job titles, physical and cognitive restrictions, transferable skills, retraining time, and what the local labor market actually pays for the jobs left open. The economic side takes that answer and turns it into a number — a pre-injury earnings path, a post-injury earnings path, and the discounted present value of the gap between them.
Every input in that chain is contestable, which is exactly why the methodology has to be visible. Worklife expectancy is not the same as life expectancy; it is a statistical estimate of remaining years of labor force participation, sensitive to age, sex, education, and disability status. Growth rates, discount rates, fringe benefit loading, and personal consumption offsets in a wrongful death claim each move the total materially. An expert who reports a figure without showing the tables and assumptions behind it has handed opposing counsel the cross-examination.
Data selection matters more in this region than most. California wage bases are high and regionally uneven — occupational earnings in San Jose or San Francisco can differ from the same occupation in Fresno or Bakersfield by a wide margin, and the choice between a metropolitan statistical area, a statewide figure, and a national one changes the damages number without changing the methodology label. The same holds across the Puget Sound corridor and outside the Portland metro area. Defensible reports state which geographic base was used and why the plaintiff's actual and prospective labor market supports it.
Case types we support
Vocational and economic testimony appears in nearly any civil matter where a person's future earnings are in dispute. Common engagements include:
Civil litigation
- Lost earning capacity in personal injury — the difference between the pre-injury and post-injury earnings path, not merely lost wages to date
- Employability and transferable skills analysis where residual work capacity is contested
- Labor market surveys documenting what jobs the plaintiff can realistically obtain and what they pay in the relevant region
- Worklife expectancy projections and retirement-age assumptions
- Wrongful death claims — decedent's projected earnings, benefits, and personal consumption offset
- Household and family services valuation, including replacement cost for care, maintenance, and childcare a plaintiff can no longer perform
- Life care plan costing and critique, coordinated with the treating and reviewing physicians
- Wrongful termination, discrimination, and retaliation damages — back pay, front pay, and mitigation analysis
- Long-term disability and ERISA claims turning on whether the claimant can perform any occupation
- Present value calculations, discount rate selection, and rebuttal of an opposing economist's assumptions
Criminal matters
- Restitution calculations under California Penal Code section 1202.4 and the federal Mandatory Victims Restitution Act
- Victim economic loss analysis — documented out-of-pocket loss, lost income, and future earnings impairment following a violent offense
- Lost earnings components of restitution orders where the victim's capacity to work is permanently reduced
- Rebuttal of an inflated or unsupported restitution figure, including challenges to the causal link between the offense and the claimed loss
- Loss-amount analysis in fraud and theft prosecutions where the sentencing exposure turns on the number
Criminal work in this discipline is narrower than in most specialties, and it is worth being direct about that. Where it arises, it is almost always on the economic side of sentencing and restitution:
How vocational and economic testimony changes case outcomes
In a serious injury case the economic report is usually the largest single line item in the damages claim, and it is the one both sides can model. Liability is argued; future earnings are computed. That gives the report unusual weight in settlement negotiation, because opposing counsel and the carrier can run the same calculation with different assumptions and see immediately how far apart the parties actually are.
The disputes that decide these cases are rarely about arithmetic. They are about the assumptions feeding it. Would this plaintiff, with an intermittent work history and two prior layoffs, really have earned at the assumed rate until sixty-seven? Does a fifty-pound lifting restriction eliminate an occupation or merely narrow it? Is the correct comparison group the plaintiff's actual employer, the county, or the state? Testimony that anticipates those questions and answers them from published data survives cross-examination; testimony that treats them as obvious does not.
There is also a coordination problem that goes wrong often. The physician defines functional capacity, the vocational expert converts that capacity into employability, and the economist converts employability into dollars. When those three opinions are developed in isolation, they contradict each other — a residual functional capacity in the medical report that is quietly more generous than the one the vocational expert assumed is a gift to the defense. Reviewing the chain for internal consistency before disclosure is a large part of what our involvement is for.
Why West Coast attorneys retain through Themis
Themis Expert Witness, LLC operates as a managed expert network. Dr. Alban does not testify as a vocational economist; he identifies and vets the vocational rehabilitation counselor or forensic economist the matter actually calls for, then stays involved through report review and trial preparation. In injury and wrongful death cases he also supplies the medical opinion on functional capacity that the vocational analysis has to rest on, which is where the two disciplines most often fail to meet.
California trial courts apply the gatekeeping analysis from Sargon Enterprises v. University of Southern California, and Sargon itself was a lost-profits case — the opinion is squarely about speculative economic projection. Evidence Code sections 801 and 802 let the court examine the matter an opinion rests on, which in practice means the wage tables, the growth and discount rates, and the worklife source. CACI 3903 series instructions require the jury to reduce future economic damages to present cash value, so the discounting is not optional detail; it is the form the jury is told to expect.
Washington applies Frye to novel scientific evidence alongside ER 702, Oregon evaluates scientific evidence under State v. Brown and State v. O'Key with OEC 702, and federal matters across the Ninth Circuit apply Rule 702 as amended in December 2023, which requires the proponent to establish admissibility by a preponderance rather than leaving reliability questions to weight. Reports are built with the governing standard in view. Where a workers' compensation award, a stipulated permanent disability rating, or an existing vocational evaluation already sits in the file, it is reconciled with the civil claim before disclosure rather than surfacing for the first time at deposition.
Practice notes for each jurisdiction are set out on the California, Washington, and Oregon pages, and the engagement process explains what happens after you make contact.
Frequently Asked Questions
Fees are hourly and depend on whether the matter needs a vocational evaluation, an economic calculation, or both. Vocational and economic experts commonly bill in the several-hundred-dollar-per-hour range for file review and report preparation, with deposition and trial time billed at a higher rate or against a half-day or full-day minimum. A vocational evaluation involving an in-person interview and testing costs more than a records-only analysis. Preliminary screening is complimentary, and a written fee schedule is provided before the engagement begins.
For a straightforward case with a clean work history, expect roughly three to five weeks from receipt of a complete file to a signed report. The sequence is file review, vocational evaluation or interview if one is needed, labor market research, then the economic calculation. Wage data and worklife tables are published sources and rarely delay anything. What extends the timeline is incomplete earnings documentation or an unresolved medical opinion on restrictions, since the vocational analysis cannot be finalized until functional capacity is settled.
The vocational expert determines what work the person can still perform and what those jobs pay, drawing on rehabilitation counseling, occupational classification, and labor market survey. The forensic economist takes that earnings capacity finding and builds the damages model — projecting the pre-injury and post-injury earnings paths, applying growth and discount rates, and reducing the loss to present value. Some experts are credentialed to do both. In higher-value matters the two roles are usually separated so each opinion rests on the discipline that actually supports it.
Tax returns and W-2s for several years before the injury, an employment history with job titles and duties, pay records and a fringe benefit summary, education and training documentation, and the medical records establishing restrictions. In a wrongful death claim, add household composition and any evidence of services the decedent provided. If the plaintiff has a workers' compensation file, Social Security disability record, or prior vocational evaluation, provide it — an inconsistency found early is a problem; one found at deposition is a much larger one.
The projected annual losses are discounted back to a present sum using a rate meant to reflect what the award could safely earn if invested. The convention is a net discount rate — the difference between the assumed wage growth rate and the assumed interest rate — which avoids arguing two forecasts separately. California jury instructions direct the jury to reduce future economic damages to present cash value, so the calculation must be shown rather than asserted. Rate selection is a standard area of cross-examination and should be sourced to published data.
No. A workers' compensation permanent disability rating is produced under a separate statutory schedule with its own definitions and is not the measure of lost earning capacity in a civil action. It is still discoverable and will be used against an inconsistent civil opinion, so it has to be addressed directly. The usual approach is to explain what the rating measures, what the civil claim measures, and why the two figures differ without either being wrong. Ignoring the file is what causes trouble.
Related expertise
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Financial Expert Witness
Economic damages, financial analysis, and quantification testimony for commercial disputes and civil litigation.
Forensic Psychologist Expert Witness
Competency, criminal responsibility, emotional distress, and psychological injury evaluations for court.
Complimentary preliminary screening
Retain a vocational economist expert witness
Preliminary screening is complimentary. Send the posture of your matter — jurisdiction, claims, and the schedule you are working under — and Dr. Alvaro Alban, MD, MBA will identify the expert discipline the issue points to, check availability and conflicts, and tell you candidly whether the materials look suitable for expert review before you retain anyone.
- Service area
- California, Washington, and Oregon — state and federal courts, in person and by remote deposition.
- Phone
- (347) 860-4763