In 2024, as a result of relatively robust and widespread production growth across different industry branches, industrial employment expanded, outpacing the increase in the overall private sector employment. This scenario contrasts with that of 2023. The study summarized in this Letter uses microdata from IBGE’s PNAD and is part of the periodic monitoring conducted by the IEDI.

In the private sector as a whole, the number of employed individuals grew 2.7% in 2024, nearly double the expansion of the previous year (+1.3%). In the industry, employment advanced 3.1% against a mere 0.7% in 2023. When considering manufacturing only, excluding the extractive sector, the increase was of 2.9% in 2024 compared to 0.4% in 2023.

Certain industrial branches stood out with even higher employment growth. Notable examples include: electrical machinery and equipment (+13.5%), IT and electronic equipment (+9.3%), and food products (+8.7%), followed by metal products (+6.9%), furniture (+6.7%), and textiles (+6.2%).

When grouped by technological intensity, the extreme categories—high and medium-low technology—were the ones where jobs expanded the most. The high-technology industry, after a 5.7% reduction in employment in 2023, recorded a 5.4% growth rate in 2024. The medium-low technology industry accelerated from 1.4% in 2023 to 5.0% in 2024.

The intermediate categories, however, showed more restrained employment growth in 2024. The medium-high technology industry recorded a 1.6% decline, while the medium intensity category maintained virtually the same number of employees compared to 2023 (+0.1%).

In the last quarter of the year, however, similar to production trends, the expansion of manufacturing employment slowed down, although its performance remained above that of the overall private sector, a trend that marked the second half of 2024.

Compared to the same period in the previous year, the 5.3% growth rate in Q3 2024 gave way to a 3.1% increase in manufacturing, while the private sector as a whole decelerated from 3.0% to 2.6%, respectively.

Other activities where private-sector job creation also lost momentum at the end of last year include vehicle trade and repair, services, and electricity and gas, as detailed throughout this Letter.

More recent data on total employment (not limited to the private sector) suggest that this slowdown continued into early 2025, both in the aggregate and in the industry, though less intensely for the latter.

Regarding formal employment (with signed work contracts), the increase in the industry in 2024 was also greater than in 2023, although the formalization process through this type of job was more pronounced in the rest of the private sector.

In the industry as a whole, formal employment grew 2.9% in 2024 compared to 2.4% in 2023, and in manufacturing it rose 2.8% against 2.0%. In the private sector as a whole, the pace in 2024, at 3.9%, surpassed that of total employment, which increased 2.7%, as mentioned earlier.

It is worth noting that industrial employment is predominantly formal, far ahead of the private sector average, which thus has more room for additional formalization. Using the share of jobs with signed contracts relative to the total number of employed individuals as a proxy for formalization, the general industry reached 67.3% and manufacturing 66.5% in 2024, compared to 43.1% for the total private sector.

It is also noteworthy that, compared to the pre-pandemic period (2019), the share of formal employment in the industry grew more rapidly than in the overall private sector. In the industry, it rose from 64.7% to the aforementioned 67.3%, and in manufacturing, from 64.1% to 66.5%, representing increases of 2.6 and 2.4 percentage points, respectively. In the private sector, it went from 41.6% to 43.1%, or +1.5 percentage point. Retail trade, sanitation, and construction were other sectors with an increased share of formal employment relative to total employment.

Certain industrial sectors are even more formalized, such as petroleum derivatives, pharma-chemicals and pharmaceuticals, metallurgy, electrical machinery and equipment, machinery and equipment, and automotive vehicles, all with a proportion of formal jobs exceeding 90%. Others, such as textiles, wood products, rubber and plastics, and furniture, stand out for the significant increase in this proportion between 2019 and 2024.

The final remark concerns the evolution of income. Between 2023 and 2024, the average income typically received by industrial workers increased more than in the overall private sector: 5.5% versus 4.2%, respectively.

However, when comparing 2024 to the pre-pandemic period (2019), industrial employment remuneration did not keep pace with the rest of the private sector: +2.8% in the general industry and +2.0% in manufacturing versus +7.6% in the overall private sector.

Despite the more favorable year for the industry in 2024, the remuneration of its workers is constrained by the low growth in productivity and, on the other hand, by external competitive pressures due to the tradable nature of its goods, which hinders passing costs onto final prices.

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