Informality and tertiarization: two opposite tendencies?

ABSTRACT The article discusses some issues concerned with the idea of flexibility in the labor market. Firstly, it presents different approaches on the existence of an informal sector in the economy and distinguishes the modem process of tertiarization, observed in industrialized countries, from the growth of tertiary activities found in most developing countries. Secondly, a brief discussion on the recent juncture of the Brazilian labor market is presented. The conclusion is that a higher degree of flexibility in the Brazilian labor market has been searched throughout the informalization of legal activities and also by an incipient process of modern tertiarization.