This is the third in a series of four notes that report the results of the study The Dynamic Nature of Employment and Income in the Legal Amazon carried out under the Amazon 2030 project (AMZ 2030). The study includes a detailed discussion of the economic vitality of the Legal Amazon based on the identification of occupations and sectors that have recently (2012-2019) contributed most to employment and income generation in the region. The work uses data from the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios Contínua – PNAD-Contínua) conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística – IBGE) and expands on the research on the dynamics of the Labor Market in the Legal Amazon, which began the series of AMZ 2030 publications. In this note, we present the results of the study as they pertain to the service sector in the Amazon region.
An in-depth analysis of the evolution of the service sector shows that: (i) in contrast to the low growth trajectory of total employment in the region, the service sector experienced a significant rise – in fact, the absolute variation of employment in the service sector was higher than the variation for the entire Legal Amazon between 2012 and 2019; (ii) in the “services” occupations, the “salespeople” category stood out the most, showing exceptional growth rates; (iii) the highest level of dynamism in the service sector was concentrated in people who have completed at least upper secondary education, at the expense of a retraction in the employment of people with lower educational attainment, thus reinforcing income inequality in the region. This situation shows that the region’s economic dynamism occurs mainly in urban activities, which are not related to the forest.
