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

So if the employee contributes 3%, the employer does, too, but a contribution of 4% still gets only a 3% match.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026

Seven people are now being held as part of the probe, including the Nvidia employee, two from Super Micron and one from Taiwan-listed Albatron Technology.

From Barron's ● Jul. 28, 2026

The federal employee also stated that he did not know what action the department would take with grants that were awarded but still lacked fully-executed agreements.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026

Li was an early employee of Tencent, which is now China’s most valuable listed firm.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026

They weren’t exactly free; she just paid for them with her employee discount.

From "Millionaires for the Month" by Stacey McAnulty

With recent departures, the number of employees responsible for processing most records requests has dropped to 17 employees from 27, officials said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026

BMW employs about 154,000 people worldwide and the offer would be open to German employees in desk-based roles, the source said.

From Barron's ● Jul. 29, 2026

So employees must choose a contribution that makes sense for their budget and that, to the extent possible, maximizes the match.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 28, 2026

Chief Executive Ryan McInerney said in a memo to employees that most of the roles affected would be in technology and product teams, but that there would be cuts across the organization.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026

Neighbors, soldiers, State Department employees, and even some reporters tried to enter the Seward house.

From "Chasing Lincoln's Killer" by James L. Swanson

Related Words

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