Afinal, Somos um País de Classe Média? Mercado de Trabalho, Renda e Transformações Sociais no Brasil dos Anos 2000[So, Are We a Middle-Class Country? Labor Market, Income, and Social Change in Brazil in Twentieth Century]

The recent discussion about the new middle class in Brazil is quite timely and should be encouraged, as it highlights the great social changes that have occurred since the resumption of the fastest economic growth in the Lula government (2003-2010). Part of the analysts focus on the high generation of new occupational opportunities and the improvement in the incomes of the people already occupied; others emphasize the emergence of an exuberant contingent of new consumers and the rapid expansion of consumption by the popular strata. In this text, we intend to make a brief reexamination about the occurrence and the question of the middle class, with the purpose of contributing to the understanding of the emergence of class "C" or the so-called new middle class of the 2000s in Brazil .