John P. Martin is the former Director for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs at the OECD, his brief also covers OECD work on health and international migration. He is an Irish citizen. After studying Economics at University College Dublin, he worked as a research assistant at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin from 1970 to 1972; during this period, he was also economics correspondent for the Sunday Independent. He did postgraduate studies at Nuffield College, Oxford. In 1975, he became research fellow at Nuffield College and lecturer in economics at Merton College, Oxford; he also lectured in economics at the University of Buckingham.

John P. Martin joined the OECD in 1977 and has held several posts in his current directorate and in the Economics Department. He was the first editor of the OECD Employment Outlook from 1983 to 1986, and he also edited the OECD Economic Outlook in 1992-93. He was a member of the Editorial Board of OECD Economic Studies for many years and is an associate editor of Labour Economics. He is a member of the Council of the Institute for Employment Studies in the United Kingdom, and a Policy Associate of the Leverhulme Centre for Research on Globalisation and Economic Policy at the University of Nottingham. He is a part-time Professor at the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) in Paris. He has published many articles on topics in labour economics and international trade in professional journals and has also written and edited several books in these fields.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in October 2004.