This is the second 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 Job 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 occupations associated with the public sector in the Amazon region. This choice of perspective is meant to portray the importance of the public sector as a source of economic dynamism for the Legal Amazon, considering that activities related to the private sector have failed to generate jobs at the regional level.
The study on the evolution of public sector employment in the Legal Amazon is quite revealing. We highlight three key results. First: the number of people employed in the main occupations related to the public sector grew 21.6% between 2012 and 2019, which is four times the total increase in employment for the region, with wage gains also much higher than in the rest of the economy. Second: health, education and security professions experienced the greatest employment growths in the region. Third: there is significant variation in the results across states, especially vis-à-vis the pattern of public servants’ salaries. These results indicate an increasing presence of the public sector in the Legal Amazon, with potentially relevant effects on the State’s ability to sustain such employment dynamics. The feasibility of financing such dynamism in public employment in the region over the coming decades is definitely an issue worth addressing.
