Centro de Políticas Sociais

During the 90’s, the Brazilian economy went thought important changes. The economy was opened to both international commerce and capital flows, inflation rate dropped steeply and the state presence was reduced. These structural changes had important effects on the economic growth and on the labor market. First, the industrial employment fall was compensated by the increase of the commercial and services employment. However, after 1997 this phenomenon almost finished, leading to an increase on the unemployment rate. This paper is concerned with analysis of labor market performance on the 90’s, showing the evolution of the employment level and structure, the real labor profitability and work productivity on the economic sectors, and the unemployment rate. The conclusion of this analysis is that the real profitability and the labor costs increased in all sectors. In addition, the marginal labor productivity increase exceedingly compensated the relative price changes, that occurred during the economy stabilization. It was also concluded that there was a great increase of the structural unemployment, suggesting that labor legislation modifications are needed