Employee

An employee is any entity that is hired by employers. Typically, it is a worker who is hired to perform a specific job. The employee is in a relationship between two parties, the other being the employer, called employment. Employees exist in the public, nonprofit, and household sectors as well as the "for-profit" sectors.

The employee contributes labour and expertise to an enterprise. Employees perform the discrete activity of economic production. An employee may contribute to the evolution of the enterprise, but usually has little autonomous control over the productive infrastructure, such as intellectual property and business contracts. Employees usually are the labour in the three factors of production, the others being land and capital.

Employees are assigned a set of tasks, each task being "the job" of the employee. Typical examples include - accountants, solicitors, lawyers, photographers, among many other worker classifications.

Workers who sell their labor on their own are called independent contractors and they are not technically classified as employees.

Sometimes employees are represented by labor unions (American English), or trade unions (British English).

See also: Profession, List of professions