Wage labor force in the State of São Paulo’s agriculture: evolution and importance in the 2004-2014 period

Abstract

In 2014, out of 702,000 people over 10 years old and engaged in agricultural activities in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, 460,000 were employees (permanent and temporary). It is also worth mentioning that in the 2004-2014 period, the economically active agricultural population of São Paulo underwent a very strong reduction of 328 thousand people (rate of -3.7% per year). Out of this total, 187,000 (or 57.1%) were employees. As a result, the objective of this article is to analyze the evolution and importance of this category of workers in São Paulo’s agriculture in the 2004-2014 period, based on information from the primary data of the National Household Sample Survey (PNAD), conducted by the Institute Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). Special emphasis will be given to the following aspects of the agricultural labor market in the mentioned period: the continued decline in agricultural employment; the masculinization of the economically active population (EAP) engaged in agricultural activities; and the predominance of wage labor relationships.