Jesús Villero is an economist with research interests spanning labor, public, and development economics. His work focuses on education policy, labor market dynamics, and economic demography. At PWBM, Jesús provides technical support to the microsimulation and policy analysis teams, contributing expertise in causal inference and applied economics research.
Jesús earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University in 2023. During his doctoral studies, he served as a graduate research assistant with the Georgia Policy Labs, working on projects related to K-12 career and technical education across multiple states. Previously, he received an M.A. in Economics from Georgetown University and worked as a research associate at Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), where he supported randomized controlled trials in financial inclusion. Learn more about his work on his personal website.
Over 700,000 Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients lose legal status by the end of 2025, including 550,000 who are legally working. We estimate that TPS recipients contribute over $36 billion in annual GDP. Withdrawing their work authorization could add to labor shortages in construction, cleaning, and hospitality, especially in Florida, Texas and New York.
The impact of income-driven repayment (IDR) educational financing plans by income, race, and gender is not generally well understood. Our analysis estimates that approximately 43 percent of the subsidies from President Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan will accrue to current Black student borrowers and 71 percent to current female borrowers. While lower- to middle-income student borrowers stand to gain the most, we estimate that about a fifth of the benefits will go to households in the top 20 percent of the income distribution, and borrowers with graduate-level education who benefit from the SAVE plan tend to experience the highest savings on average.
The economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic were widely expected to fall disproportionally on women. Instead, the employment rate of prime age women recovered faster than men’s and rose to its highest point in U.S. history in 2023. We show that the resilience of women’s employment is driven by two long-term trends that predate the pandemic and continued through it: 1) the growing share of women who are college graduates, and 2) the rising labor force participation of college-educated mothers with young children.
