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

They may be performing the work as an employee or as an independent contractor.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 17, 2026

Using account data, the company found the user was a federal employee operating White House teleprompters.

From BBC ● Jul. 16, 2026

Its EPS rose faster than the 27% increase in net profit due to stock buybacks, which were partly offset by employee stock awards.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 14, 2026

An OpenAI employee told security that they thought they saw him on a bus near the company’s office.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 12, 2026

“I want to have an animal; I keep trying to buy one. But on my salary, on what a city employee makes—”

From "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" by Philip K. Dick

The county did not question the value of the employees or their need for higher income and health benefits; they simply challenged the district’s ability to afford them.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 17, 2026

Is Microsoft laying off 3,200 employees from the Xbox division just a new boss coming in and pruning an overgrown asset, or is it a sign that console gaming is coming to the end?

From Slate ● Jul. 17, 2026

Lauer said Giftory's roughly 30 employees get a premium AI subscription costing about $200 a month -- "peanuts" stacked against an average salary of $100,000 a year, and cheap enough to make offshoring "uncompetitive."

From Barron's ● Jul. 17, 2026

Now, Xbox is laying off employees, divesting itself of five studios and calling for a “reset” of the business.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 16, 2026

Mom didn’t have any coworkers, or employees or bosses, either.

From "The Strangers" by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Related Words

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