Digital Lexicon Hub

A unit that expresses workload or capacity as the number of full-time people it equals; 1.0 FTE is one full-time role.

FTE turns hours into a staffing language leaders understand, so teams can compare workloads, plan hiring and express time saved by automation or AI as people-equivalents.

A 15-person product team recovers about 64 hours a week through better AI adoption; at a 40-hour full-time week that equals 1.6 FTE of capacity, which the team moves to customer research instead of hiring.

FTE hides who does the work and which skills are involved, and recovered FTE is capacity, not a cash saving, unless roles or spending actually change. Full-time hours differ by country, contract and company.

FTE = total hours worked or recovered ÷ hours in one full-time schedule for the same period. In Eurostat's example, a part-time employee working 20 hours a week where full-time is 40 hours counts as 0.5 FTE. Statistical offices use FTE to compare employment across part-time and full-time work. In AI Return on Investment (ROI) models, recovered value divided by the Fully Loaded Cost per person gives the FTE equivalent of the capacity freed.