full-time equivalent

noun

The result of a calculation to estimate the effective size of a workforce that may include part-time workers.

“We estimate our work-from-home employees to be 30% of our total full-time equivalents.”

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Meanings

nounfull-time equivalent (plural full-time equivalents, abbreviation FTE)

plural full-time equivalents · abbreviation FTE

  1. The result of a calculation to estimate the effective size of a workforce that may include part-time workers.

    We estimate our work-from-home employees to be 30% of our total full-time equivalents.

    1 more example

    Many of those are tied to human labour, from the per-hour fees of professional services firms to the per-seat subscriptions of software companies and the “full-time equivalents” (FTEs) that advertising agencies use to calculate fees.

    2026 April 4, Richard Waters, “AI disruption: who will get hit?”, in FT Weekend (Big Read section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 5
Cite this entry
APA

full-time equivalent. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/full-time%20equivalent

MLA

“full-time equivalent.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/full-time%20equivalent. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “full-time equivalent,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/full-time%20equivalent.

Source: full-time equivalent on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.