The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the employment situation, both globally and within individual states. Several tens of millions of people in the world were left without work. The unemployment rate, both statistically confirmed and hidden, has risen significantly. Only the most developed and richest countries were able to restrain the rapid growth in the number of unemployed through budget transfers. At the same time, the era of social distancing contributed to the revision of work standards in many industries, changed the conditions of employment and the requirements of employers to employees. The forced transition of thousands of institutions to remote work was a catalyst for the digital economy and led to the emergence and rapid growth of new clusters of professions of the future. The world after the pandemic will no longer be the same, and in the field of employment in the first place.