The present research aims to establish the impact that the current crisis situation the planet is facing, namely the COVID-19 pandemic, has had so far on the Romanian labor force market. In this context, given the lack of information and information regarding this pandemic and its effects, the administration of a questionnaire among the population was considered to identify the research results. The method of semantic differential and the method of ordering the ranks were used for the interpretation of the results. With the help of this questionnaire, it will be possible to answer the question of the research in this study: What are the main effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Romanian labor market? The main results showed that the COVID-19 pandemic affected the Romanian workforce; the respondents of the applied questionnaire claimed that they obtained better results and maintained a similar income, but the health crisis also influenced the mentality of employees, with respondents stating that in the event of changing jobs, they would consider it very important for the new employer to ensure the conditions for preventing and combating COVID-19, as well as complex health insurance. However, analyzing at the macroeconomic level, it was found that the COVID-19 pandemic induced an increase in the number of unemployed people in the Romanian labor market.

The health crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic has induced, among other things, an increase in the importance of remote work or teleworking (TL) in the current period. The objective of this research is to identify the economic and social impact of telework in changing the behavior of employees in Romania. The research was conducted approximately one year after the onset of the pandemic until the beginning of the vaccination period in Romania. The research proposed includes three main directions of analysis of the extracted data, which are related to telework efficiency, this being considered one of the most important indicators for a company. In order to obtain conclusive results, we used a mixed methodology, combining results obtained through a survey based on a self-administered electronic questionnaire, with a data mining analysis. Detailed analysis of the groups identified based on work efficiency allowed us to highlight the most common employee profiles. This analysis was doubled by a second classification experiment, which provided us a more detailed analysis of the groups identified based on job satisfaction and highlighted the most common employee profiles. The expansion of telework in various economic areas is a result of adaptation to the new economic and social conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper proposes an insight into the relation existing between economic development and resource consumption and the associated implications and challenges for forested areas in Romania. In accordance with this purpose, the methods used are both qualitative and quantitative by using a relevant literature review, including international and national reports. In the 1950s and 1960s, Simon Kuznets introduced to modern economic theory the idea that there are certain market forces directly correlated with economic development. After almost two decades of a market economy in Romania, we are witnessing a relative decoupling process between economic development and social inequality. Moreover, the country strives to make the transition to a circular economy by involving all relevant stakeholders and by attracting the necessary financial support. Sustainable development offers the perspective of reaching an equilibrium between economic, social, and environmental aspects. Finding the right tools to assess multiple impacts has always been challenging as regards decoupling the economic development from natural resource consumption. Although there are multiple interpretations of the outcomes of a decoupling process, this paper aims at assessing the evolution of forested areas through econometric research using the Environmental curve of Simon Kuznets. As our main results, we have observed a decoupling process in the GDP growth that will not lead to a decrease in wooded areas in our country, mainly due to rural–urban migration, shifts in consumption patterns (from firewood toward natural gases, etc.) and improvement in the legislative framework in the case of forestry products. Among the weaknesses of the model used are the limited data availability and the reduced number of observations with annual frequency (data were taken only for 22 years), the use of a square pattern instead of a cubic one (it is possible for the results to differ and consequently another form of this curve, either N or N-inverted) or the use of data with a low accuracy related to the total forest areas in Romania. Among the conclusions of the papers, the decoupling process is not a single action process. Our research focused on forest area and the need to connect it with other policy actions related to mainstreaming sustainability, promoting a circular economy or bioeconomy, or developing innovative public policies and instruments.

The European Parliament presents on its official website information on how the European Union intends to reach a circular economy by 2050. The action plans and directions, the key sectors of the circular economy, as well as the ways of waste management and transport are presented. On the other hand, the Department for Sustainable Development within the Romanian government presents its own vision of the circular economy. It should be appreciated that the Romanian perspective is based on studies that are based on the perceptions of citizens. The aim of our research is to highlight the cohesion between the Romanian perspective and the European vision in terms of how they understood to harmonize their principles and directions of action in the field of circular economy. It is known that Romania joined the EU on January 1, 2007 and has 33 members in the European Parliament. Currently about 77% of Romania’s exports are made to the EU (Germany 23%, Italy 11% and France 7%) and Romania’s imports come in proportion of 75% from the other EU member states (Germany 20%, Italy 9% and Hungary 7%). Although Romania has committed to adopt the euro as soon as it meets the necessary conditions and is in the process of joining the Schengen area, these goals are not yet fulfilled in 2022. The findings of our research allow us to conclude that beyond strategies and action plans, action and its consequences are important. Romania’s paradigm in terms of the circular economy can be considered surprising in its similarity and antagonistic in its results. Our conclusions allow the opening of new directions of research regarding the perspectives of the circular economy through economic and social resilience.

The circular economy is currently being regarded as a solution to an environmental crisis that is as severe as the epidemic, but is less apparent to the general public. For anyone interested in learning more about the circular economy and its application areas, there is a wealth of knowledge available in both specialist and secondary information sources. The purpose of our investigation is to identify the most important characteristics of the circular economy as they are presented to the public in different parts of the globe. We decided on the infographic analysis as a solution for this. They communicate their message in a succinct manner, yet they have a significant influence on the audience. Do these communications have an impact on how people perceive the domain? This is the question that our investigation seeks to address. We conducted a study of the literature in order to provide clarity. This demonstrated to us the fundamental qualities of the circular economy, as well as the specificities of the application sector in question. In order to examine the literature, we make use of VOSviewer. This is a software program that allows you to create and examine bibliometric networks. Our research team has used it to create networks of cooccurrence pricing of relevant phrases that were pulled out of a corpus of scientific literature using the text extraction feature of the software. Our results enabled us to draw attention to the unique characteristics of the circular economy, as well as the message that each country and region of application sends to its target audience. The findings of research may also be utilized to develop compelling messages that can be delivered in various regions of the globe.