Based on the paradigm and system approach, the author analyzes the evolution of the labor law paradigm, which formed within the industrial type of society and economy and is currently experiencing a paradigm crisis, as it is losing its cognitive effectiveness and predictive purpose. For labor law as a complex developing system, the process of evolution is characteristic. It is similar to the paradigm process, which is mediated by two coherent factors (permanent - socially significant needs of the subjects of labor law, and temporal - the dominant type of society and economy). The same factors are typical for the evolution of the system, where socially significant needs act as a permanent system-forming factor of the industry. The external environment acts as a temporal factor - changes taking place in society and the economy, with which the system is in constant interaction. These processes differ in the outcome of a possible scientific crisis. The paradigm approach assumes one way out - a scientific revolution and the emergence of a new paradigm. The development of events with a systematic approach is more variable. When, as a result of the modification of individual elements of the system, the process of evolution starts, leading to a crisis, it can end both with the death of this system, and with transformations in it and the formation on the basis of the old system of a new one, more adapted to external conditions, that is, the emergence of a new paradigm. A judgment has been put forward that the new paradigm of labor law should be based on a transformed, expanded understanding of the labor relationship as a relationship based on labor activity carried out by an individual personally in order to meet socially significant needs and maintain his life, in any form, under control, management and / or subordination to the subject providing work (employer), in whose interests the work is carried out.