1. Natural resources, and the materials derived from them, represent the physical basis for economic growth. Recent decades have witnessed an unprecedented growth in demand for resources. This has sparked increased interest from policymakers in a transition to a more circular economy. Three main reasons are often highlighted for promoting a circular economy transition. First, reduced extraction, processing, and disposal of natural resources may have significant environmental synergies; more efficient resource use could represent an important tool for achieving climate and other environmental goals. Second, the reduced reliance on critical resource and material inputs and improved security of materials access that result from expanded domestic secondary material supply is also important; supply risks associated with future geopolitical shocks could be mitigated in importing countries. Third, the activities that will drive any circular economy transition could also become significant drivers of job creation and economic growth. New opportunities will emerge in various sectors, including secondary material production, repair and remanufacture, the services sector, and the sharing economy. 2. The focus of this paper is to review the literature on the third point, i.e. the employment and growth implications of the transition to a more circular economy. Addressing this issue is complex. Any such transition will involve multiple interactions between different sectors and countries, and will take place in parallel with other trends like digitalisation and automation. Ex ante, economy-wide quantitative models appear to be best suited to analysing this transition as they capture the major trends influencing the economic consequences. Furthermore, there is insufficient ex-post data on the consequences of circular economy enabling policies for a robust empirical assessment. As such, the analysis in this paper is restricted to studies that have used macroeconomic models. However, in this context, such models are also only recently emerging; 16 of the 24 studies considered are either currently in progress or were published since 2015. 3. Four key conclusions emerge from the existing literature. First, all models highlight the potential re-allocation effects that the introduction of circular economy enabling policies could have. The competitiveness of material intensive sectors – natural resource extraction and certain types of manufacturing – will probably decline; workers, regions, and countries specialising in these activities may be made worse off in any circular economy transition. Other sectors – waste management and recycling, remanufacturing and repair, and services more generally – will probably expand as their output becomes relatively affordable. Second, most models find these shifts will have a muted, or even positive impact on aggregate macroeconomic outcomes. In other words, the current literature indicates that a transition to a (broadly defined) circular economy – with the associated reductions in resource extraction and waste generation – could take place with potentially significant positive (or at least without negative) consequences for economic growth or overall employment. Third, dynamic multi-region models are well suited to capturing the transition in the economy, as well as the socioeconomic trends and trade impacts that will accompany any transition. In contrast, (static) single region models may be better suited to representing material circularity in more detail. Fourth, three key sets of assumptions, that drive modelling outcomes, and the quality of the policy advice that emerges from them, are identified: (i) assumptions on future efficiency improvements (e.g. future rates of material productivity growth, cost of the underlying drivers, and role of policies), (ii) assumptions on the degree of substitutability between primary and secondary materials, both for different materials, and in different applications, and (iii) assumptions on the changes in the future structure of the economy and consumption patterns, and to what extent will these take place in the absence of policy drivers.