Davi Winder Catelan

This dissertation is composed of two essays that have as central theme the impacts of the Brazilian economic crisis of the biennium 2015-2016 on the domestic labor market. In the first essay, the objective is to verify the immediate effects of the recent Brazilian economic crisis in different groups of workers in the Federative Units. The methodology used is the Shapley´s decomposition, using the microdata from the National Continuous Household Sample Survey (PNADC), from 2012 to 2017. It was observed that, due to the recessive shock, the groups of men, least educated individuals, adults and non-whites were relatively the ones that suffered the worst adjustments of the employment. The greater loss of employment for men and adults is mainly explained by the high pre-crisis employment rates of these individuals. In the case of men, their greater representativeness in the industrial sector was also a determining factor for this result. The least educated and non-white were more affected by the more significant reduction of employment for these individuals in all economic sectors. In economically less developed Federative Units, such as Alagoas, Maranhão, Piauí and Roraima, the reduction in employment was higher and differences in employment adjustments between the groups were not in line with the national average. In the more developed Federative Units, such as Santa Catarina, São Paulo and Minas Gerais, the reduction in employment was lower, possibly associated with an increase in the participation of workers in the labor market, relative increases in informal work and employment and with the greater degree of formalization in these Federative Units. The second essay analyzes the relationship between the changes in the composition of employment and the increase in informality that occurred in Brazil since the economic crisis of the 2015-2016 biennium. To do so, PNADC´s microdata is used for the period from 2012 to 2018. In general, occupational reallocation, which occurred in the economic sectors, contributed negatively to the increase in informality in Brazil, in the Federative Units and for the groups, while reallocation in the categories of work contributed positively. The negative contribution was attributed to the loss of participation of the industry in the total occupation and the gain of the services, because the level of informality in the industry was greater. The positive effect was related to the loss of participation of wage labor and the increase of the self-employed, because the self-employed´s informality was greater. For some groups and Federative Units, the sign of the effect of occupational reallocation and its magnitude diverged from the Brazilian average, indicating that the effects of the economic crisis have been transmitted asymmetrically. Thus, policy-makers should prioritize vulnerable groups and stabilize job losses in the most affected sectors and regions. To this end, measures must be taken to reduce productive and non-productive differences among workers, in addition to actions that promote economic development.