Economy of Sao Jose dos Campos

It is also known as the "Brazilian aeronautics capital" because it is home of CTA and one of the biggest aircraft manufacturers in the world, Embraer. It owes much of its economic success to Embraer's presence.

Service industry

Since the 1990s, the local economy has been evolving in a different direction. The manufacturing economy has been downsized or replaced by tertiary and quaternary sectors of industries.

For instance, the Entrepreneurial District of Chacaras Reunidas concentrates companies of micro, small and medium size, which are mainly the result of downsizing from old large local industries. Yet even though most of these are industries, these companies provide service as well.

Two technological parks and five (one in project) business incubators have been created within universities or industrial facilities.

There are incubators with technological start-up companies installed at Univap and at Henrique Lage Refinery of Petrobrás. The CTA houses other incubator, Incubaero, specialized in the aeronautical field.

Univap features a technological park with capacity for around 40 small to medium sized innovating companies in the areas of materials, electronics and telecommunications, information technology, aerospace, energy, environment control, biotechnology, bioinformatics, chemical engineering, and software among others. A new technological park, managed by the municipality and the state government of São Paulo, will house two new think tanks: the Institute for Technological Research (IPT) and the ItecBio (Instituto de Tecnologias Biomédicas).