Sectors of the Economy and their Characteristics

The economy constitutes and represents the related social phenomena and capture and circulation of material and financial resources aimed at the development of societies, structures and people. This area of ​​knowledge is usually subdivided into several sectors, classified according to the function that they exercise along the production chain, from the production of raw materials to consumption direct. In this sense, there are activities, practices and goods that belong to all these sectors, while other elements are included in only one.

The most common way of classifying economic activities is to divide them into three types - which is even officially adopted by institutions such as IBGE (Institute Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), Ipea (Institute for Applied Economic Research), INPE (National Institute for Space Research), UN (United Nations), among others. These types are: the primary sector, O secondary sector and the tertiary sector. In some approaches, there is also a quaternary sector to refer to the service sector, but in official classifications, it appears included in the tertiary sector along with commerce.

PRIMARY SECTOR

The primary sector is raw materials production sector and also primary products, that is, those that are consumed directly, without going through any kind of industrial or manufactured transformation. Therefore, this sector of the economy involves plant, animal (hunting and fishing) and mineral extraction, in addition to including also the practice of agriculture (cultivation of vegetables) and livestock (raising animals for non-domestic purposes).

This area of ​​economics is considered to have the first development in human history, being practiced more incisive with the development of agriculture in the Neolithic period, which formed the bases for the constitution of the first civilizations. Currently, there are many countries that have most of their economies centered on the primary sector, a mark of the most underdeveloped territories on the planet.

Having an economy dependent on the production and export of raw materials is considered problematic in many ways, due to its disadvantages, namely: a) great dependence on climate, which makes development vulnerable to droughts or catastrophes environmental; b) low export value, which requires a large amount of exported products to balance the trade balance; c) poor remuneration of workers, especially in countries where human development is low and labor laws are not correctly applied in rural areas; d) higher cost of importing industrialized products, which increases financial dependence, mainly on countries that dominate cutting-edge technologies.

Therefore, although the development of the primary sector is necessary for the growth of any country or territory, depending on exclusively or primarily of this activity is an index among the many that exist to point out a relation of underdevelopment. The important thing, in this case, is to diversify economic activities and invest in better use of structural technologies.

SECONDARY SECTOR

The secondary sector constitutes the activity of processing raw materials and primary products, including the use of natural resources to obtain energy or its inclusion in some form of production. Therefore, this sector includes industrial activity and energy production. By convention, civil construction is also included in this typology, which is defined as a kind of industry.

Industrial activity, the main core of the secondary sector, has been in existence for a long time, being originally formed in manual production lines, in a kind of “evolution of the craftsmanship". However, its most productive and systematized conception began to occur in the 18th century, with the Industrial Revolutionstarted in England.

Originally, only the most developed countries were considered industrialized (classical industrialization countries), such as England, France and some regions of the United States. Later, the countries with a planned economy, self-styled socialists, also developed within the secondary sector, which later extended to the capitalist countries underdeveloped and emerging. Brazil, for example, is considered a country of late or recent industrialization, as it was only in the course of the 20th century that it managed to focus its economy on this sector, accompanying other territories with the same profile, such as Turkey, Mexico, Argentina and many others.

TERTIARY SECTOR

The tertiary sector is considered the trade and services sector and therefore encompasses the sale of a primary product or an industrialized product. Thus, merchants, liberal professionals (teachers, lawyers, doctors, etc.) and service providers are included in this area of ​​economic activities. Its appearance precedes the industrial development and occurred from the moment that the activities farms began to generate a surplus, so that different peoples began to negotiate and exchange each other. The invention of money, obviously, intensified this practice, to the point of giving rise, at the end of the Middle Ages, to an initial form of Capitalism centered on this sector, Commercial Capitalism.

Currently, with the process of mechanization of agriculture and industry - which leads to the replacement of workers by machines - most of the workforce and job vacancies are allocated to the tertiary sector, which, however, also includes the sector informal. This process – called the tertiarization of the economy – is latent in developed countries, which currently concentrate around 70% of their workers in this sector, which has also been intensifying in countries emerging. In Brazil, according to the IBGE, approximately 60% of workers are employed in the tertiary sector. When this situation intensifies too much, the concept of hypertrophy of the tertiary sector is highlighted.

By Rodolfo F. Alves Pena
Master in Geography