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As COVID-19 had been posing unprecedented challenges, the economic agents as well as the individuals had to adapt to a new lifestyle. The preventing measures against the spread of the virus determined an increase in e-commerce activity in general, and in mobile commerce in particular. In this regard, sellers redefined their strategies revolving around smartphone applications for online shopping, which will gradually become the global shopping standard. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to evaluate the current situation of e-commerce, focusing on the main transformations since the beginning of the pandemic. The methods used in the paper consist in both qualitative research of the literature regarding e-commerce and a quantitative analysis that captures two aspects: on one hand it highlights the change determined by the pandemic in online commerce, and on the other hand it shows an X-ray of the EU states positioning in terms of e-commerce evolution. The latter consists in a comparative Hierarchical Cluster Analysis that aims to provide an image on the situation of EU states, before and after the pandemic has been installed. The Cluster Analysis was carried out in SPSS software and it is based on a series of chosen indicators from Eurostat database. This comparison provides an image of how changes among the clusters take place in terms of e-commerce indicators. It is noted that in countries where the digitization was more developed, the value of the change in online commerce was less considerable, comparing to the Eastern and Balkan states, which had a more significant increase. However, there are significant limitations based on the small number of indicators taken into consideration in this paper. Future work needs to be done in order to explore new ways to address the challenges identified in the development of e-commerce and online shopping.

E-commerce is one of the industrial sectors created as a result of technological progress, and has created new jobs for the economy. However, this sector is conditioned not only by the level of digitalization of each state, but also by the speed of integration of technology in the business environment. The main purpose of the article is to present the impact of e-Commerce development on the labor market. It also considers impact on the labor market of human capital with advanced technological skills. It focuses on data from a particular period situated between two major crises (the economic crisis of 2008 and the health crisis of 2020). We want to know to what extent a technology-created sector can compensate for technological unemployment. To test the working hypothesis, we developed a panel regression model for a sample of 28 European states. The results indicate that 99.5% of the variation in the labor market activity rate of people aged 15 to 64 years in the selected sample of states is explained by the model. This confirms that the development of e-Commerce and an increase in the percentage of technology-specialized human resources contribute to the increase in activity rate in the labor market. As a result, the labor market must be assisted in keeping up with technology by restructuring the education system, or introducing courses that maintain competitiveness and continuous development.

In the case study we aim to analyse the long-term distribution of vacancies on the Romanian labour market. This approach allows us to identify one of the long-term consequences of the digitalization of the economy, namely polarization. Polarization can be viewed from several perspectives, but here we are only referring to the polarization of the job supply. The phenomenon implies a significant reduction in interest in mid-level jobs. Thus, to identify the probability that this phenomenon will already manifest itself in Romania, we carried out an analysis with the help of Markov chains. In this way we will identify the occupations that could be the most numerous in the long run in Romania. Even if Romania does not indicate an obvious polarization of the labour market, in the long run, clues in this regard can be identified. There is a system of vocational training at national level, but it does not cover the prospects of the labour market.