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

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Etymology

Origin of employee

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

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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

Part of the June plan was a $40 billion program for selling shares gradually into the market, which Alphabet says is mainly meant to cover taxes on employee stock awards.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 4, 2026

If health prices don’t explain rising employee and employer costs, what does?

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 3, 2026

Unless an employee comes along with a new sticker, the person reaching for the same box ten minutes later sees the same number.

From Salon ● Nov. 2, 2026

Two weeks ago, Worth Girvan’s campaign published an ad featuring Christina Rackohn, a former employee whose family company merged with Gaspar’s insurance company, who alleged he created a hostile work environment.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 31, 2026

There was the nurse, but she was a full-time employee of the prison.

From "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers

Sometimes buybacks merely mitigate the dilution caused by a company’s issuance of stock to give to its employees as part of their pay packages.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 4, 2026

However, it is understood that buyers are only interested in about half the stores at present - meaning roughly 6,000 employees would not be re-employed.

From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2026

It currently has approximately 130 employees, a number that co-founder and Chief Executive Yoav Regev expects to double within the next 12 to 18 months as AI—and the need to secure it—grows.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 4, 2026

Stock handed to employees as pay can offset the shares a company retires, so I would track shares outstanding to see whether each shareholder’s stake is actually growing.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 4, 2026

“The bank employees say the robber was a thin white man. Another witness said he thought the man got into a red car.”

From "Blended" by Sharon M. Draper

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Related Words

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

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