What does "workforce" mean?

All the workers employed by a specific organization or state, or on a specific project.

Workforce

Common synonyms include: manpower, any plural of the meronyms, hands, human resources, jobforce, labour force.

//ˈwɝk.foɹs// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
All the workers employed by a specific organization or state, or on a specific project.
"The rail sector's ageing workforce (28% of workers are over 50 years old) means that about 15,000 people could retire from the industry by 2025."
2
the force of workers available wordnet
3
The total population of a country or region that is employed or employable.
"“There is no question the US economy will get smaller as you deport a lot of the workforce,” Kent Smetters, professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said in an interview."

"Management has threatened to lock out the workforce if they do not accept the proposed changes."

From work + force.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.