employee

American  

[em-ploi-ee, em-ploi-ee] / ɛmˈplɔɪ i, ˌɛm plɔɪˈi /

Rarely employe,

noun

• employees
  plural

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

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employee British  

/ 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

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Usage

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.

Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• preemployee
  noun
• proemployee
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• employees
  plural

Etymology

Origin of employee

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

Explanation

An employee is someone who's hired to do a particular job for pay. If you like to shop in a certain store, you might also enjoy being an employee there. You can see the verb employ, meaning "put to use," in employee. You can employ a pen in writing a letter, just as a grocery store might employ workers to collect the shopping carts from the parking lot. A person who is put to work is an employee. Employee implies that the worker reports to a boss, and it's most commonly used for non-executives who work for a salary.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

employee employees

The U.S. attorney for northern Mississippi highlighted a former federal employee convicted of plundering a pandemic-era loan program for distressed small businesses.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026

In 1981, the IRS issued regulations allowing any employee to contribute to such plans out of their wages.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026

Dan, Bill’s current part-time employee, told me that when the Trump Superstore closure was first announced, about two weeks earlier, there had been massive crowds.

From Slate ● Aug. 14, 2026

Yes, it’s expected that a potential employee demonstrates the skills and experience to do a job.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 13, 2026

“Do you have any enemies you can think of? Someone who would want to hurt you like this? Maybe a former employee? An old business partner?”

From "Warcross" by Marie Lu

None of the employees contacted by AFP wished to comment on the site's future.

From Barron's ● Aug. 16, 2026

It is GM, they say, that is the bigger overall contributor to the U.S. workforce, when factoring in salaried employees as well as hourly workers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026

The company encouraged employees to spend time testing out the chatbots, Matan Zinger, a former Google engineer who worked on products like Search and Google Wallet, told MarketWatch.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 15, 2026

“We have 18 employees, and many of them lost family members,” said Karina Ferreira, currently managing El Rey del Pescado.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 14, 2026

Standing in the shadows were two McDonald’s employees.

From "Shooting Kabul" by N. H. Senzai

Related Words

• agent
• attendant
• clerk
• laborer
• member
• operator
• representative
• staff member
• worker