participate steadily. Interestingly, participation rates increased in all three countries for older men (age 45-70), notably in Argentina, in part due to an increased retirement age. Both men with a primary education or less and those with higher education significantly increased their participation in Argentina and Costa Rica, and reduced it in Brazil. The participation of men with secondary education changed very little.

Consistent with regional trends, in all three countries these labor force participation trends have coupled with a shrinkage in the formal sector share of employment, which reflects an increase in the share of informality (defined as informal salaried work and. self-employment) in Argentina (by 2-3 percentage points), informal salaried jobs in Costa Rica (by I percentage point), and mostly of self-employment in Brazil (from 19% to 26%). By the end of the relevant periods, informal employment is largest in Brazil (43%), followed by Argentina (37%) and remains much smaller in Costa Rica (30%).

Table 2 presents statistics describing the composition of employment in each sector according t:o various worker characteristics. The general skill composition of each sector changes to reflect an increasingly more educated and aging labor force, with some country-specific variation. Formal sector employment is mainly comprised of middle-age (25-45 years) workers with primary and secondary schooling and to a lesser extent higher education. The sector increasingly accommodates more educated (secondary and higher) workers within the middle age group, as well as young workers with college or more in the case of Argentina and Costa Rica. The informal salaried sector is mostly comprised of (any age) workers with primary education and young middle-age workers with secondary education. In Argentina and Brazil, the sector shows a growing preponderance of middle-age workers with secondary education, and in Costa Rica of professionals and workers with higher education. Self-employment is the main sector of choice of middleage and older workers with primary education and middle-age with secondary, but increasingly accommodates more middle-age and older, better educated workers, especially in Argentina.

The data available for Argentina on tenure in occupation indicates that the formal sector increasingly comprises a mix of workers with some experience (less than 5 years of tenure) in their occupation and more experience (more than 10 years), while the informal salaried sector largely comprises new workers (less than one year in current occupation). Self-employment went from being mainly a refuge of more senior workers to comprising mostly new workers with some experience. Data on general labor market experience for 1995 in Brazil. are broadly consistent with these patterns, but suggest that sectoral differences in general experience may not be as large.<sup>2</sup> ' Formal employment is mainly comprised of manufacturing, public administration and social services, retail and transportation/communication/public utilities. Infornal employment is mostly comprised of jobs in retail, construction, manufacturing, and personal services, and a relatively larger share of financial service jobs among the self-

> **21** This refers to the usual exp= (age-education-6) computation, although here this is based on workers' report of the age they began to work, which is available in the 1995 Brazilian survey.

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