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

His departure is one of the first examples of an Anthropic employee leaving over AI safety fears.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026

This time that will be Angel City Lumber employee Madeline Paterson, who helped care for her in the wild.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026

"The question then becomes whether the employer increases expectations on the basis that the employee can now produce more work. Is that fair?" questions Chander.

From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026

I am a GS-12, Step 3 federal employee earning $119,356 annually.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 8, 2026

At four-thirty, a woman walked in and announced she was the last uninterviewed employee of Gutshot Textiles currently at work.

From "An Abundance of Katherines" by John Green

Google co-founder Larry Page reportedly told employees that he’s “willing to go bankrupt rather than lose this race.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026

"Today, it's not money that's the limiting factor, it's finding employees with the skills we need," Jarbur said.

From Barron's ● Sep. 9, 2026

It has in the past blamed individual employees for isolated attempts to obtain other companies’ technology, according to court filings.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026

"Because they misunderstand it, this is not being reflected to employees," says Rahman, who runs a London-based consultancy, HR Habitat.

From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026

Though they cared enough to kick everyone out when the former employees tried to bunk down in the once-plush rooms and make use of the supplies and heat.

From "The Marrow Thieves" by Cherie Dimaline

Related Words

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