employee

Rarely em·ploy·e,

[em-ploi-ee, em-ploi-ee]

noun

1. a person working for another person or a business firm for pay.

employee

/ ˌɛmplɔɪˈiː, ɛmˈplɔɪiː /

noun

1. Also called (esp formerly): employé. a person who is hired to work for another or for a business, firm, etc, in return for payment

Other Word Forms

• preemployee noun
• proemployee adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of employee¹

First recorded in 1825–35; from French employé “employed,” past participle of employer to employ; -ee

Example Sentences

Companies such as Amazon and Target have announced tens of thousands of layoffs, ending a postpandemic trend of holding on to employees for fear of not being able to get them back later.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Tackling this problem should be a "shared responsibility" between employers, employees and health services, it concluded.

Read more on BBC

Johnson told Barron’s that the projected percentage increases represent ranges rather than absolutes, and that individual payouts would depend on the company and the employee’s performance.

Read more on Barron's

Since the spring, the report has shown a labor market in which few companies are hiring — or firing — employees.

Read more on MarketWatch

More recently, companies have abandoned their pandemic-era protocol of holding on to employees—known as labor hoarding—because it was so hard to find and hire workers.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• agent 
• attendant 
• clerk 
• laborer 
• member 
• operator 
• representative 
• staff member www.thesaurus.com
• worker 

When To Use

What does employee mean?

An employee is someone who gets paid to work for a person or company.Workers don’t need to work full time to be considered employees—they simply need to be paid to work by an employer (the person or business that pays them). The term employee is sometimes used to distinguish contract workers from full employees (who often earn additional benefits), but in this example, both types of workers are considered employees in the general sense.Example: My company has more than 500 employees.