payroll

American  

[pay-rohl] / ˈpeɪˌroʊl /

noun

• payrolls
  plural

1. a list of employees to be paid, with the amount due to each.

2. the sum total of these amounts.

3. the actual money on hand for distribution.

   The bandits got away with the payroll.

4. the total number of people employed by a business firm or organization.

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verb (used with object)

1. to fund or subsidize.

   to be payrolled by the State Department.

payroll British  

/ ˈpeɪˌrəʊl /

noun

1. a list of employees, specifying the salary or wage of each

2. 1. the total of these amounts or the actual money equivalent

   2. ( as modifier )

      a payroll tax

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• payrolls
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of payroll

First recorded in 1765–75; pay ¹ + roll

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Explanation

A company's payroll is a complete list of everyone who works there and how much money they make. The small coffee shop where you work might have just four employees on its payroll. Any business or organization with a paid staff has a payroll. A school's payroll might include the principal, teachers, office workers, school nurse, and maintenance workers, for example. You can also use the term payroll for the entire amount of money that a company pays its workers over the course of a year, or for the department that calculates these salaries and hands out paychecks.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

payroll payrolls

At least one of the programs uses the number of employees and monthly payroll to determine how much money an applicant receives.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2026

Prosecutors alleged in the complaint that the applications included false and fraudulent statements such as the number of employees and average monthly payroll.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2026

Rather than hand their data and workflows to a vendor’s FDE, enterprises are putting them on the payroll full-time, The WSJ Leadership Institute’s Belle Lin reports.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 3, 2026

They are disappearing because AI is expensive, and payroll is the one big cost a CEO can cut by Friday.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 3, 2026

At the end of the night, I walk out with Bo and Marcus since Ron is still doing payroll.

From "Dumplin'" by Julie Murphy

U.S. employers added 165,000 workers to payrolls in October, thumping economists’ expectations of a 59,000 addition.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026

This suggests that if the jobs report doesn’t show a spike in unemployment or an unexpected drop in payrolls, the market’s view of the Fed’s policy path is unlikely to change much.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 4, 2026

Outside of the election, U.S. data prints include the ISM services index for October, the ADP’s report of private payrolls for October and the balance of trade for September.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 4, 2026

For the October report, analysts forecast nonfarm payrolls to grow by 65,000, up from 29,000 in September, with the unemployment rate unchanged at 4.2%.

From MarketWatch ● Nov. 4, 2026

We conferred together and I recommended to the Congress and you subsequently approved taking 2 percent from payrolls and 10 percent from controllable expenditures.

From State of the Union Address by Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines) Johnson

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Related Words

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