The current pandemic crisis, which is far from being over, has led to a significant paradigm shift in economics. In a turbulent environment in which the labor market has encountered a long series of changes generated by the processes of automation, robotization and digitalization, the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that a workforce with digital skills can quickly adjust to new circumstances. Since novel issues, such as restrictions on internal movement and distorted supply chains, put major stress on the labor market, it seems that there is an urgent need for reshaping economies and following up-to-date technological trends. Moreover, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, a significant number of scholars and policymakers expressed their concerns about the volatility of employment and the weak ability of labor to adapt to new types of jobs. Within this framework, our paper aims to analyze the plausible impacts of digital efficiency on the future development of the labor market. Based upon the assumption that employment is facing ongoing challenges and the labor market is constantly being reshaped by technological trends, our study attempts to provide a pragmatic analysis of the effects of digital skills and the use of the Internet on salaries and wages in EU member states. Since, according to our results, the levels of salaries and wages are strongly correlated with digital proficiency and Internet usage, a consistent effort to increase the digital skills of individuals may be required to achieve a more effective and flexible labor market.

In the past two decades the topic of “green jobs” has drawn particular attention, resulting in a widely diverse and relatively large number of published papers. Although a determinant for the increase of knowledge, the heterogeneity of these studies may raise the issue of a systematic documentation of the key contributions in this field. In this context, the present research focuses on analyzing the scientific literature published in the last five years on the topic of “green jobs” with the aim to identify definitions and meanings associated with the concept of “green jobs”, the connected terms, areas of research interest and the main theoretical and practical results. The results reveal that although there is no uniformity in the definition of the concept, there is still a convergence towards the initial meaning offered by the UNEP/ILO/IOE/ITUC Report of 2008. Moreover, using scientific software VOSViewer our research shows that the concept of “green jobs” is most linked with the following terms: sustainable development, the green economy, the circular economy, the welfare economy, the European Green Pact, energy, renewable energy, economic development, and employment. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that the studies focused on “green jobs” are mainly concerned with the following issues: green jobs creation, work-life balance, correlations between green business and green jobs and the role of local government in supporting green jobs.