employee

American  

[em-ploi-ee, em-ploi-ee] / ɛmˈplɔɪ i, ˌɛm plɔɪˈi /

Rarely employe,

noun

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

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

This concerned a service member who was killed in a car accident by a federal employee driving a government vehicle.

From Slate • Jun. 2, 2026

But among those claiming to have been impacted were security researcher and former Meta employee, Jane Manchun Wong.

From BBC • Jun. 2, 2026

Corrections & Amplifications American Axle employee Josh Jager makes a higher hourly wage because he is a skilled-trade worker, a role that pays more than production workers.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 1, 2026

Muir, additionally, pointed to a recent Axios report that one company had spent $500 million in a single month because no limits had been placed on employee Claude usage.

From MarketWatch • Jun. 1, 2026

Please answer the following question in detail: on the day of our meeting at the post office, what type of piercing did the postal employee have?

From "What If It's Us" by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera

Related Words

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