It is used to express disapproval of a condition where a person feels compelled to work in return for payment of a wage. In colloquial terms, this may refer to people that make a cult of work (the extreme case is dying of karoshi), or those who require one to work in order to be socially acceptable. In terms used by critics of capitalism, wage slavery is the condition where a person must sell his or her labor-power, submitting to the authority of an employer, in order to merely subsist. Different sources seem to have different ideas about what practical conditions would qualify a worker as a wage slave.

For example: wage slave can denote a worker who has no choice in who they work for, or in the type of job they can get; either due to economic and geographic circumstances, or due to personal lack of competence or education.

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