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workforce

UK/ˈwɜːk.fɔːs/US/ˈwɝk.foɹs/
nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,780 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: workforces

The workforce is all the people working in a company or a country. A skilled workforce, cut the workforce, the global workforce.

It is counted rather than named, which is what the word does: a workforce is people considered as a total. Statistics distinguish it from the labour force, which includes those looking for work as well.

Our World In Data · CC BY 4.0

Definitions of workforce

  1. 1nounworkforceAll the people working in a company or a country together.B2+

    “The factory's workforce is mostly made up of young people from nearby villages.”

workforce is a group.

Where it comes from

From work + force.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Work & Careers

Practise this word

workforce in the wild

  • Downsizing in a company is defined to involve the reduction of employees in a workforce.

    Layoff

  • The three most commonly used measures of input are: hours worked, typically from the OECD Annual National Accounts database workforce jobs; and number of people in employment.

    Workforce productivity

  • EOLWD is responsible for enforcing the Commonwealth's labor laws and for providing workforce training to citizens.

    Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.