This article proposes a methodology to estimate the occupational dimension of the Health Care sector and emphasizes the essential role played by this sector in the generation of jobs and in the improvement of the qualification profile of the Brazilian labour market. The assumption underlying the analysis is that, for the health care sector, as for the other segments connected with social policy, labour is the central element in the organization of their activities. Although the new technologies may help, they can only replace the human resources in a very limited number of activities. Since an important part of the risks inherent to care cannot be reversed, and must, therefore, be systematically prevented, health care requires the constant elaboration of policies concerned with the qualification and regulation of human resources in health. The analysis is based on data from the 2000 Demographic Census and from the Annual Relation of Social Information for the year 2001.
jobs; social policy; regulation
