Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as: "A person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, where the employer has the power or right to control and direct the employee in the material details of how the work is to be performed." Black's Law Dictionary page 471 (5th ed. 1979).

In a commercial setting, the employer conceives of a productive activity, generally with the intention of generating a profit, and the employee contributes labour to the enterprise, usually in return for payment of wages. Employment also exists in the public, non-profit and household sectors. To the extent that employment or the economic equivalent is not universal, unemployment exists.

Quotes about employment:

Sourced

• One of the best maxims in determining our course in life is, to select, at the outset, that in which virtue and principle will be least likely to be put to a test, and in which, from the nature of the calling, a man may bring around him such associations and influences as will be an auxiliary in keeping him in the path of virtue.
  • Albert Barnes, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 437.

Unsourced

• "If G-20 governments could spend billions of dollars to rescue banks in trouble, why not find money to help unemployed workers for the environment and for social causes."
  • Kumi Naidoo Environmentalist, Human Rights Activist (2010)

• "The boss is never your friend, even if you're sleeping with him."
  • Jacob Appel, playwright, Arborophilia (2005)

• "Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life purpose. Labor is life."
  • Carlyle

• "Cheerfulness is the daughter of employment; and I have known a man come home in high spirits from a funeral, merely because he has had the management of it."
  • Dr. Horne

• "Employment, which Galen calls "nature's physician," is so essential to human happiness, that indolence is justly considered as the mother of misery."
  • Burton

• "Indolence is stagnation; employment is life."
  • Seneca

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Tue Aug 24 08:49:52 2010