O mercado de trabalho do setor de tecnologia da informação e comunicação e a polarização do emprego: evidências para o Brasil entre 2007 e 2019

Abstract

The phenomenon of job polarization refers to a tendency for labor demand to grow at the extremes of the wage distribution (low and high levels of education), while demand at the intermediate end of the scale decreases as a result of technological advances in the labor market. The reduction in mid-level employment can be explained by the presence of routine activities. In this context, the aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of jobs in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector on jobs in different education strata (high, medium and low) in the Brazilian labor market. To do this, we used a fixed effects estimator for panel data, with RAIS database from Brazil as the main source of data. The relationship between jobs in the ICT sector and jobs in the three educational levels was analyzed for Brazil, at the municipal level, from 2007 to 2019, based on the polarization hypothesis discussed in the literature. The results point to a positive relationship between the ICT sector and medium- and high-education jobs, not confirming the polarization hypothesis in the country.