Vocational Expert (VE)

A vocational expert (VE) is an impartial witness on jobs and workplace demands who testifies at disability hearings at the request of the Administrative Law Judge. The VE classifies your past work by exertion and skill level, then answers hypothetical questions from the judge describing a person with specific functional limitations.

Based on those hypotheticals, the VE testifies about whether such a person could perform the claimant's past work or other jobs existing in significant numbers in the national economy, often citing specific occupations and job numbers. Your representative can cross-examine the VE, challenge the reliability of the job data, and pose additional hypotheticals that include all of your documented limitations. VE testimony is frequently the deciding factor at step five of the evaluation.