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

It also found employee discipline records, a worker’s criminal-history report, contractor payroll data, tax forms and passports.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 17, 2026

Four men — including a Los Angeles Department of Water and Power employee — were responsible for more than $170,000 in damage to downtown buildings during a yearlong graffiti spree, prosecutors alleged Thursday.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026

“There is no production target, financial result or business objective that is more important than ensuring every employee and contractor returns home safely every day,” Oplinger says.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026

At a San Francisco playground, a stranger tried to befriend an OpenAI employee who was there with their child.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026

New Sky Trails employee saves passenger on first day on job, she thought to herself, imagining the praise and congratulations—and maybe the raise—she’d be sure to receive if what she was visualizing was real.

From "Found" by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Meanwhile, employees have been jolted by sharp drops in the value of stock-based pay that could take years to recover.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2026

Costs from hiring, junkets and pro-sport endorsements to build the retail operation added up and drew ire from other divisions, the current and former employees said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2026

Some current and former employees now say the firm relied too much on wealthy individuals for growth and has struggled to respond to the private-credit backlash effectively.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2026

To give employees more autonomy, managers should first lay out clear guidelines, principles and guardrails for the work.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026

The change helped insulate agents from local corruption and created a truly national force, yet it also ignored regional difference and had the dehumanizing effect of constantly uprooting employees.

From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann

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Related Words

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

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