The article analyzes the trends in the changing world of work and the mechanisms for regulating social and labor relations, as well as the possibility to adapt social policy in the context of global changes in the modern economy due to its technological development (primarily, widespread digital business formats). The author explores the mechanisms of employment changes in the digital economy and highlights its factors. The main factor is the need to reduce business costs due to impossible further extensive expansion of markets. This request is implemented through changing regulation mechanisms of social and labor relations. The author analyzes the effect of this factor and notes its contradictory effect on the sphere of professional employment that leads to a significant reduction in labor costs. As a result, there is a major deterioration of the situation in the social and labor sphere, as well as difficulties with the implementation of social policy. The conclusion presents a call for a radical change in the very paradigm of the social state itself in society and elites. The article considers the formation of the call in the industrial era, the implementation of non-trivial organizational decisions while changing its institutional infrastructure. According to the author, the need to search not theoretical and methodological, but practical solutions to the challenges of digital transformation determines the imperative knowledge of the social consequences of the technological transformation of the modern economy. Assigned this way, the research problem required a more complete knowledge of the technological development process from the point of view of its social consequences, and a detailed study of the strengths and weaknesses of the experiments on introducing a universal basic income in different countries, as a "monetization" mechanism of the modern social state. The aim of the work is to conceptualize approaches to the study of social issues in the context of technological changes and to understand international experience in reforming social policies.