private sector

private + sector

private sector (plural private sectors)

1. (business) All organizations in an economy or jurisdiction that are not controlled by government, including privately owned businesses and not-for-profit organizations.

   After spending two decades at various government agencies, he returned to the private sector and took a job as a business consultant.

   • 2013 August 10, Schumpeter, “Cronies and capitols”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8848:

     Policing the relationship between government and business in a free society is difficult. Businesspeople have every right to lobby governments, and civil servants to take jobs in the private sector.

   • 2022 August 24, Nigel Harris, “Comment: Rail strikes deadlock”, in RAIL, number 964, page 3:

     After decades of observation, it's pretty obvious to me that all governments are uniformly useless at actually running anything, so we need to employ the private sector to do the job for us on properly specified contracts [...].

• (antonym(s) of “business”): public sector

• public sector