Industry 4.0 and labor market

notes about the Brazilian case

Abstract

During the past decade, technology and digitalization have been advancing in a comprehensive and innovative way, with regard to both the creation of new technologies and new interactions between existing technologies, and, especially, in relation to the junction of technologies inserted in the production chains with digitalization and the internet. In this sense, it is of great relevance and pertinence to reflect on the impacts on the labor market and on the generation and destruction of jobs; this theme is gaining increasing curiosity, whether in universities, research institutes, multilateral agencies, specialized consultancies, public bodies, etc. In this perspective, the objective of the present work is to reflect on some potential impacts of industry 4.0 on the labor market, with emphasis on the analysis of the Brazilian case, from 2008 to 2018. Methodologically, the work will be guided by the international bibliographic review on the theme and analysis of data from the Annual List of Social Information (RAIS), for the study of the Brazilian case. It is noted that the percentage of occupations potentially demanded by industry 4.0 and those associated with R&D vis-à-vis the total number of occupations, is still quite low in the Brazilian labor market, in addition to having little growth over the studied decade.