labour-intensive

British

adjective

of or denoting a task, organization, industry, etc, in which a high proportion of the costs are due to wages, salaries, etc

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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.

And Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG, added that "investors are rotating away from labour-intensive, fee-based business models that could face margin pressure from AI automation".

From Barron's • Feb. 13, 2026

Major deals will help labour-intensive sectors hurt by tariffs.

From Barron's • Jan. 11, 2026

Manufacturing is no longer the labour-intensive engine of prosperity it once was, but a capital-heavy, high-tech enterprise.

From BBC • Jun. 15, 2025

But a 26% across-the-board tariff rate is still steep, and will severely affect major "labour-intensive exports", says Priyanka Kishore of the Asia Decoded consultancy.

From BBC • Apr. 3, 2025

The TCT-DP test has long been acknowledged as the premier tool to assess creativity in school aged children, but as it is expensive, slow, and labour-intensive, it's out of reach for most schools.

From Science Daily • May 30, 2024

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023