In this paper, we examine the determinants of workers' mobility across the formal and informal sector of the Brazilian economy, end from these to the states of unemployment, self-employment and inactivity in the 1980s and 1990s, using longitudinal data from Monthly household surveys for 6 metropolitan regions in Brazil and multinomial logit regression models. We examine the role of demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, education na region of residence, and the time that the worker was in the specific state. Moreover, we compare the transition processes in 1984 and in 2001, to examine the determinants of the big rise in informality that took place in the 1990s. The results point to a higher exit probability from the formal sector for the men, younger and less skilled workers, with the exception of the most skilled, which have a higher probability of transiting to the informal sector. Moreover, workers that are in the formal sector for a shorter period of time have a higher probability of transiting out of it. In the beginning of the new century, the transition process to informality and unemployment generalized, mainly with respect to education and age categories.
