Padrões espacial e setorial da evolução da informalidade no período 1991-2005

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the evolution of informality in the Brazilian labor market after the economic opening process, emphasizing spatial and sector patterns. The data from Pnad allows one to identify a clear dichotomy between metropolitan regions, where informality increased substantially, and the non-metropolitan areas, where it went down. In the aggregate, the level at the final of the period is slightly lower than in the beginning, with low variations along the period. Another interesting finding is that the sector reallocation, with the migration of a series of activities from the industrial to the service sector, opposed to what is usually believed, did not play a crucial role in explaining the rise in metropolitan degree of informality. In fact, the remarkable increase of informality within the industrial sector points to a dissemination of an “informality culture” in the metropolitan areas, which would be the main factor to understand such upswing. Symptomatically, the industrial sector did not display the same behavior in the non-metropolitan areas, where there was even a decrease in the incidence of informal practices, which illustrates well the spatial differences in the evolution patterns.