English Translation
The employees also share the same idea.
What are the differences in connotation between 従業員、労働者、雇い人?
The employees also share the same idea.
What are the differences in connotation between 従業員、労働者、雇い人?
We have several words referring to “worker” in Japanese: (1) 有職者, (2) 就労者, (3) 従事者, (4) 労働者, (5) 従業員, (6) 職員, (7) 勤務者/勤務員, and (8) 雇い人 or 使用人.
Among them, (1) 有職者 and (2) 就労者 are mainly used when you distinguish from unemployed people. (1) 有職者 is particularly used when a person has abilities to work, and then he/she has a job – the antonym is a person who is willing to work but cannot find a job (e.g. due to economic recession). (2) 就労者 also has the almost same meaning as (1) 有職者, but sometimes used when you distinguish from retired persons or juveniles (i.e. such generations usually do not work because of their age).
(3) 従事者 is used with some other words, and requires which industry/type of responsibilities the person is engaged. For example, “essential workers” is a frequent use under the COVID-19 pandemic. The term includes medical industry, grocery shops, shipping companies etc. 医療従事者, for example, means “workers in the medial industry”.
(4) 労働者 is not usually used to describe a particular person because it sounds like a blue-collar worker who is easily replaceable (i.e. sounds rude). 労働者 is more frequently used as a group noun and in the context of labor unions and political affairs.
(5) 従業員 and (6) 職員 are “employees” and their meanings are almost the same. The difference from “employees” in English is that both 従業員 and 職員 includes workers with managerial positions such as Managing Directors. 従業員 and 職員 also include both full-time (permanent) employees and part-time employees if they are directly hired by a company/organization.
You may wonder what the difference between 従業員 and 職員 is. I believe that there are two difference.
First, 従業員 is usually used only for private sectors whereas 職員 is used for both private and public sectors. For example, police officers and teachers working for a public school cannot be called as 従業員 but 職員.
Second, in private companies, 従業員 is a little bit more formal than 職員. 従業員数, for example, is a frequent term on corporate websites or corporate annual reports for shareholders, meaning “the number of workers at a company”. 職員数 is also natural, but sounds less professional, and can be used such an expression for internal use only (e.g. a human resource department at a company tracks the number of employees monthly and the numbers might be described by 職員数 instead of 従業員数).
(7) 勤務者/勤務員 covers not only employees including part-timers hired by a company but also “freelancers” delivering serving to the company. But these terms are not so common.
(8) 雇い人/使用人 sometimes sound like “servant” or even like “slavery”. Don’t use these terms unless (A) you worked for a company like a horse, you were unfairly fired and you are now describing yourself as a disposable object; or (B) 使用人 as a legal jargon with no derogatory connotation.
Note: The original explanation was posted on HiNative, and I added the explanation about (8) 雇い人/使用人.