The article analyses the development trends of professional education in the context of global shifts taking place in the modern economy due to its technological development. The transfer of business processes to the digital environment leads to a radical reformatting of the entire sphere of labor, a change in its quality, as well as forms of interaction between people in the production of goods and services. The author identifies the main factors that have a decisive influence on the evolution of the professional activity of the person, radically changing the requirements for the professional education system, both in terms of its content, and methods of getting it. The main factors of the ongoing transformations, according to the author, include the rapid spread of digital platforms, replacing the traditional sectors of the economy, and the automation of cognitive activity based on the algorithmic repetition of a certain set of actions. Analyzing the effect of these factors, the author notes their contradictory effect on the sphere of professional employment and vocational education, comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to radically change the very paradigm of the development of vocational education, implement non-trivial organizational decisions in the process of transforming its institutional infrastructure. The article emphasizes that professional education in modern conditions is becoming not just a connecting link between the labor market and a person, but it is the beginning to fulfill a wide range of social functions. This is especially important in the context of a reduction in the scope of labor in the high-tech digital economy.