Labour market transformations in the era of new technologies: an analysis by regions, gender and industries in Brazil.

Date
2022-11-15
Authors
Tessarin, Milene Simone
Morceiro, Paulo Cesar
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS)
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
The impact of new technologies on the workers is the subject of intense debate. However, a deep analysis of the global South qualifying their regions’ inequality is rarely addressed. We evaluated the Brazilian formal labour market, unpacking disparities according to regions, manufacturing sub-sectors, and gender. First, we created a compatibility table of the occupation list provided by Frey and Osborne (2017) and the Brazilian occupations list to identify the occupations with a higher and lower digitalisation risk. Second, we elaborated a granular view of such occupations using different dimensions (five regions, 23 industries, three technological groups and gender). Third, we analysed the employment change between 2011 and 2019 to promote a comprehensive view of the drop in employment in the past decade. Results showed that most jobs in the Brazilian manufacturing sector are in occupations at high risk of digitalisation but that there is substantial heterogeneity regionally, sub-sectorally, by gender and for all region-gender-sub-sector combinations. The proportion of women workers is smaller than the proportion of men in almost all sub-sectors, but they are concentrated in labour-intensive, low-tech sub-sectors more susceptible to digitalisation. The employment drop between 2011 and 2019 was most significant in occupations with higher digitalisation risk and even more pronounced among women in all regions. Public policies need to be adjusted to the various existing heterogeneities in the global South. It is necessary to explore the synergies between educational, regional, social and science-and-technology policies to balance the impact of new technologies on formal jobs.
Description
Keywords
Digital Labour Platforms, Gig Economy, Inequality, Regional inequalities, Manufacturing, Gender, Workers, New technologies, Brazil, Digitalisation
Citation
Tessarin M.S. and Morceiro P.C. 2022. Labour market transformations in the era of new technologies: an analysis by regions, gender and industries in Brazil. Future of Work(ers) SCIS Working Paper Number 32, Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University Of The Witwatersrand.