The deindustrialization process in brazilian economy: trends, counter-trends and their disaggregations

• Autores: Sérgio Alexandre dos Santos Júnior, Marcos Roberto Vasconcelos
• Localización: Observatorio de la Economía Latinoamericana, ISSN-e 1696-8352, Vol. 23, Nº. 7, 2025
• Idioma: inglés
• Títulos paralelos:
  • El processo de desindustrialización en la economía brasileña: tendencias, contratendencias y sus desagregaciones
  • O processo de desindustrialização na economia brasileira: tendências, contratendências e suas desagregações
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • As a stylized fact of deindustrialization, the relationship between GDP per capita and the share of manufacturing in GDP and employment follows an “inverted U” pattern, known as the “Rowthorn curve.” To contribute to this discussion, this paper analyzes the phenomenon of deindustrialization from a sectoral and subsectoral perspective, offering a detailed diagnosis of the loss of dynamism in Brazil’s industrial sector from 1990 to 2019. The analysis considers the relationship between GDP per capita and the participation of manufacturing in the national economy, both in terms of employment (MEMP) and value added (MVA). For the sectoral and subsectoral analysis, manufacturing data were disaggregated into high, medium, and low technology, according to the methodology proposed by UNIDO. The data used are from the National Accounts System (SCN), the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), and the World Bank. The findings indicate that, during the period analyzed, the deindustrialization process in Brazil did not evolve homogeneously—neither in terms of technological intensity nor across the different proxies used to measure industrialization and deindustrialization. While the share of manufacturing value added in GDP shows strong evidence of an ongoing deindustrialization process across all subsectors (high, medium, and low technology), the employment share (% of total employment) reveals a partial reversal of this trend. This contrast highlights the complexity of structural economic changes in Brazil and suggests that different dimensions and measures of industrial performance may lead to different conclusions regarding the trajectory and implications of deindustrialization.