Jesko is currently an Affiliate Professor at the Faculty of Governance, Social and Economic Sciences (FGSES) at the University Mohamed VI Polytechnique (Rabat, Morocco). He left the World Bank in September 2024 after thirty-two years of staff affiliation during which he most recently the World Bank’s Country Director for the Maghreb (2019 to 2024) and the Country Director in Latin America’s Southern Cone (2014 to 2019). A German national, originally from Hamburg, Jesko's other assignments at the World Bank focused on poverty reduction, employment and human development. He was the Deputy Director of the World Bank’s flagship World Development Report 2013 on Jobs (2013) in which a new framework for understanding jobs and employment was introduced, using a public economics lens and taking employment beyond labor market analysis proper. Earlier, Jesko consulted with the Inter-American Development Bank, the Department for International Development (UK) and several UN organizations. He was also a lecturer in development economics at the University of Potsdam (Germany). Jesko has published articles and books on skill development, employment policy, the combination of qualitative and quantitative social science research methods, poverty measurement and equity. He holds graduate degrees in social policy, as well as agricultural and international economics from the London School of Economics, the University of Wisconsin (Madison) and the University of Konstanz (Germany).

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in October 2014.