Occupational trajectories of young engineers in Brazil

This PhD dissertation analyzes 9,041 occupational trajectories of young engineers as formal employees in Brazil in 2003-2012, using Optimal Matching Analysis (OMA). These trajectories were compared to those of a previous generation of young engineers, both in its base period (1995-2002) and in 2003-2012, to identify age and period effects. The main results are: (i) as expected, management occupational trajectories (in areas related to engineering or not) pay higher wages, in all periods; (ii) in the 2000s, the third most attractive trajectory was to remain as typical engineer, path pursued by nearly half of young engineers, however, this was not verified in the 1990s; (iii) entry wages of young engineers rose 24% in real terms between 1995 and 2003; (iv) there is little occupational mobility by the generation of 1995 engineers after 2003; (v) young engineers of 1995 who remained as typical engineers during the 2000s earned only 14% more in 2012 than young engineers of 2003; for comparison, in 2012 managers from the 90s earned about 50% more those from the 2000s; (vi) there are two defining moments of occupational trajectory: a first occurs until three years after the first job, but promotions to management positions can take place between 8 and 10 years. These results indicate that, on the one hand, there was a revaluation of engineers over the past decade; on the other hand, this did not attracted former bachelors back to typical careers in Engineering. This, combined with low demand for engineering courses during the 80s and 90s, supports the hypothesis of a generational gap among engineers, documented in previous articles.