The purpose of this article was to evaluate the impact of recent changes in Brazilian economy on to sectoral employment structure, in the period 1988-2006, through the identification of the main explanations of sectoral dispersion of employment, with the largest exposure of the Brazilian economy to the international market and mainly after implementation of the Plano Real. The methodology consisted in the calculation of an index of sectoral dispersion of employment followed by a correlation test between sectoral dispersion index and normalized index of the number of available jobs. The results show that before the implementation of the Plano Real changes in sectoral demand were the main reason for modifications in sectoral changes of employment. On the other hand, pure sectoral changes, attributed to the technological, organizational and productive changes, were verified after the Plano Real, in 1994. Since 2004, the results indicate that economic changes’ effects have reduced and the sectoral changes of employment happen again more owing to changes in sectoral demand.