The article analyses the relationship between occupational selectivity and skill requirements under conditions of intense industrial restructuring. It is organized in two parts. In the first one, it analyses the profile of employees who survived the severe downsizing process in Brazilian industry during the 90's. In its second part, the article analyses the profile of the remaining job positions. Chemical industry is taken as empirical reference, partly for the intensity of technological, organizational and regulatory changes it exemplifies, and partly for its previous characteristic of high selectivity in terms of age, sex and schooling levels of its working force. Data basis are administrative informations on employment in Brazilian formal sector produced by Ministry of Labor (Rais-Caged)
