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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

The organizing effort marks a budding shift in power in an industry that has long relied on contract labor and the romantic ideal that working on games is a dream worth sacrificing for.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 31, 2023

Indentured servitude is a form of contract labor in which people pledge to work for an agreed period of time for an agreed form of compensation.

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

He promised them that they would not be inconvenienced for more than a day or two, that the Americans would soon be shipped to Dresden as contract labor.

From "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut