Abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought and continues to bring a lot of changes to the labor market. Like other countries, Romania has also been affected by these major and fast changes that have led to an accelerated digitalization of the economy and of the labor market following the forced transition to working from home. Although the labor market was also constantly changing before due to the continuous evolution of technology, the outbreak of the pandemic has greatly accelerated this process. This has led to a major transformation on the labor market, given that as a result of these changes, young people, in particular, want to (re) orient themselves towards jobs that offer greater flexibility and support reconciliation of work and family life. The labor market will never be the same as before because the pandemic showed us that it is possible to differently work and be productive. This paper aims to show which was the evolution of employment and unemployment among young people in the first year of the pandemic in Romania, what challenges they faced but also what kind of opportunities have arisen on the labor market following the changes brought by the pandemic.

Acknowledgement:
This work has been supported by the NUCLEU program, funded by Ministry of Education and Research, under the project PN 19130302

Keywords:

Labour market, covid-19 pandemic, changes, challenges, young people.