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contract labor

American  

noun

  1. labor coercible by the enforceable provisions of a contract.

  2. foreign labor supplied under contract for a particular job.


Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Gig work, contract labor, informal employment, and multiple job-holding complicate headline payroll figures.

From Barron's • Dec. 24, 2025

Two such systems are contract labor and debt bondage.

From Textbooks • Dec. 14, 2022

Raytheon's head, Greg Hayes, told investors last week the company had deployed teams to work with 400 problematic suppliers "on a daily basis, getting them raw material, giving them contract labor, giving them technical support."

From Reuters • Nov. 4, 2022

In 1942, the temporary contract labor Bracero Program attracted millions of Latino workers to the country, including more than 46,000 Mexican laborers in the Northwest.

From Seattle Times • Aug. 13, 2022

Their assignment was to guard one hundred American prisoners of war, who would work as contract labor.

From "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut