Formal employment and race/color in Brazilian tourism:

an analysis of Tourism Characteristic Activities

Abstract

The Brazilian tourism labor market is characterized by low wage levels and historically constituted structural inequalities. This article analyzes race/color inequalities in formal employment in the tourism sector, focusing on Tourism Characteristic Activities (TCAs), and investigates whether Black workers (Black and Brown) earn lower wages than non-Black workers and in which activities these disparities are more pronounced. The study adopts a descriptive approach and is based on secondary data from the Annual Social Information Report (RAIS) for 2024, made available through the National Tourism Observatory platform. The analysis examines the racial composition of the formal workforce, its regional distribution, as well as differences in average earnings and length of employment by race/color. The results show that Black workers earn systematically lower wages across all TCAs, with the widest wage gap observed in air transport—an activity that simultaneously displays the lowest representation of this group. In contrast, the accommodation and food services sectors, which together with air transport form the core of tourism and concentrate the largest volumes of employment, have a predominantly Black workforce and, paradoxically, are among the segments offering the lowest average wages. Grounded in critical tourism studies, the article demonstrates how these inequalities reflect racialized power relations and historical legacies that structure the Brazilian labor market. Finally, it is emphasized that the analysis is limited to formal employment and does not encompass informal work—an expressive dimension of the sector—suggesting that the racial inequalities identified here are likely to be even more pronounced when multiple forms of labor insertion in tourism are considered.