Glossary:Employee - SBS
See employee disambiguation page for the meaning of 'employee' in other statistical contexts.
Within the context of structural business statistics, an employee is a person who works for an employer on the basis of a contract of employment and receives compensation in the form of wages, salaries, fees, gratuities, piecework pay or remuneration in kind.
The contract is an agreement between an enterprise (the employer) and a person (the employee), which may be formal or informal, normally entered into voluntarily by both parties, whereby the person works for the enterprise in return for compensation in cash or in kind.
A worker is considered to be an employee of a particular unit if he or she receives a wage or salary from the unit regardless of where the work is performed (even from remote locations). A worker from a temporary employment agency is considered to be the agency's employee and not that of the business unit to which he or she is assigned.
In particular, the following categories are also considered employees:
- paid working proprietors;
- students formally committed to contribute to a unit’s production in return for remuneration and/or education services;
- employees engaged under a contract specifically designed to encourage the recruitment of unemployed persons;
- homeworkers if there is an explicit agreement that the persons are remunerated on the basis of the work done at home and if they are included on the payroll.
Part-time workers, seasonal workers, persons on strike or on short-term leave are all considered employees, while volunteers or workers on long-term leave are excluded.
Related concepts
- Enterprise in structural business statistics
- Persons employed in structural business statistics