Since the 1990s, the State has drastically changed its role as a provider of goods and services to normalize and regulate, and the process of productive restructuring, arising from scientific, technological and organizational advances, has imposed several challenges on the working class, especially in terms of their training and qualification for professional insertion. Thus, this work proposes to reflect and discuss the process of productive restructuring and changes in the labor and education relationship, in order to better understand Brazilian educational policies, especially those implemented since 2000, in favor of employability. To this end, it also proposes to discuss the transformations in the role of the State; the context and historicity of worker training policies; professional education and its perspectives from the 2000s.