Introduction. Precarization of employment has become one of the objective and signifi cant manifestations of the employment processes transformation in the digital economy, while it is rapidly expanding and becoming more complex. The increase in upward precarization, depending on the degree of digitalization processes development and economic turbulence, indicates that it has acquired the qualities and characteristics of a clearly dominant trend in modern economic development, which has already become a reality for diff erent categories of employed and which all participants and contractors of the labor market – employees and employers – have to reckon with. Precarization of the employed is a relatively new and therefore only fragmentally studied phenomenon not only for the global labor market, but also for the Russian labor market, where it has its manifestations and features. All this in general determines the relevance of the research topic. Theoretical analysis. The study of various aspects of precarization of employment in the digital economy as a stochastic system – its content, causes, main manifestations and related consequences, externalities – is of scientifi c interest. Particularly signifi cant in epistemological and ontological aspects is the analysis of the reasons for the intensifi cation of precarization processes in digital economy in relation to Russian conditions, namely, the reduction of jobs, the excess of the need for new specialists over the capabilities of the modern education system, the transition to the platformization of labor processes, the expansion of the short-term contracts economy. Results. Active processes of precarization in the digital economy create conditions for the formation of new employment standards and new competencies of the employed.