Work Relationship

https://publicschema.org/WorkRelationship

draft

The set of tasks and duties that one person performs, or is meant to perform, for one economic unit during an optionally known period. It covers a job in employment and a work activity in any other form of work, such as own-use production or volunteer work. The economic unit is the unit for which the work is done, not necessarily a legal employer, an organization or a workplace. An independent worker's clients do not by themselves create separate work relationships. This is distinct from the person's overall labor force status.

JSON-LD JSON Schema CSV Definition (Excel) Template (Excel)

Properties

Property	Type	Definition
Working person	`concept:Person`	The person who performs, or is meant to perform, the work.
Work economic unit	`uri`	The URI of the economic unit for which the work is done, such as an enterprise, a government or non-profit unit, or a household producing for its own use. It is not automatically a client, a workplace or a legal employer.
Legal employer	`uri`	The URI of the person or organization that is the employer in this relationship under the contract or the applicable law, as the source states it. It can differ from the economic unit, such as an employer-of-record agency, a household member who employs a domestic worker for the household, or a public body whose staff work in another unit. Recording it does not decide the person's status in employment.
Start date	`date`	The date on which this became effective.
End date	`date`	The last day on which this is effective. A period includes both its start date and its end date, so a period that applies only on 30 June 2026 has start date 2026-06-30 and end date 2026-06-30.
Identifiers	`concept:Identifier`	Identifiers carried by this entity, such as national ID numbers, program IDs, or identifiers asserted by an identity document.
Form of work	`string` (form-of-work)	The form of work that this relationship belongs to under the international statistical standards on work, such as employment or own-use production work. Whether the work is paid does not alone determine its form.
Status at work	`concept:CodedValue`	The person's status at work in this relationship, coded in a named classification such as ICSaW-18 or, for employment only, the 2018 International Classification of Status in Employment. The code identifies the classification and its edition. It is not the person's overall labor force status. A person's main-job status in employment and overall labor force status are recorded with status_in_employment and employment_status.
Work remuneration arrangement	`concept:CodedValue`	The main form of remuneration for this work, such as pay for time worked, by the piece, a fee for services or a share of profit, coded in a named scheme. Unpaid work is shown by the form of work, and the absence of a wage alone does not place work outside employment.
Work seasonality	`concept:CodedValue`	Whether and how the timing and duration of this work depend on seasonal factors, such as climate, holidays or harvests, coded in a named scheme. It does not by itself determine employment status, contract duration, working time or the dates of the relationship.

Evidence

Standard	Equivalent	Match
schema.org	EmployeeRole	narrow
schema.org EmployeeRole describes employee relationships only. A work relationship follows the job or work activity of the 20th ICLS resolution (paras 7-9) and covers every form of work.

Referenced by this concept

WCA 2030 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 2026
ILO 19th ICLS (2013) International Labour Organization (ILO), 2013
ILO ICSE-18 (20th ICLS, 2018) International Labour Organization (ILO), 2018
International Classification of Status in Employment (ICSE-18) Manual, August 2023 International Labour Organization, 2023
Schema.org Schema.org Community Group (W3C)

See full reference catalogue