What is a full-time equivalent (FTE)?

How is a full-time equivalent calculated?

Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union, defines a full-time equivalent as a unit that makes employed people comparable even when they work different numbers of hours a week. A person's hours are compared with the hours of a full-time worker. A full-time employee counts as one FTE. Someone who works 20 hours a week where full time is 40 hours counts as 0.5 FTE. The figures for a whole company, industry or country can then be added together.

What counts as full time depends on who is measuring:

• Norway. In its statistics on local government employment, Statistics Norway has measured agreed working hours against an ordinary full-time week of 37.5 hours. From 2015 it calculated the figure from each job's percentage of a full position.
• US federal budget. The Government Accountability Office's budget glossary describes FTE as regular hours worked divided by the compensable hours in a fiscal year. Overtime and holiday hours are left out.
• US health coverage rules. The aim here is to decide whether an employer is large enough for certain Affordable Care Act provisions to apply. For that, the Internal Revenue Service has employers add up the monthly hours of staff who are not full time, counting at most 120 hours per person. Employers then divide the total by 120.

Why are job cuts announced in FTEs?

Some employers describe staffing changes in FTEs, not in numbers of people. DNB, a Norwegian bank, said on October 6, 2026 that a restructuring would reduce its workforce by about 400 FTEs. The Norwegian word for the unit is "årsverk". The business news site E24 explained it in its report as the amount of work one person in a full-time job does in a normal working year.

A figure in FTEs measures workload, so it does not say how many people are affected. Because part-time employees count as fractions, the number of people behind a given FTE figure can be higher than the figure itself. DNB's release gave its cut only in FTEs and did not state a number of people.