collocation: staff or workforce, or both

[Vanina Petrova]

In English File Advanced (SB) on p. 24 in Vocabulary c 8 is the following example
The manager is in charge of 400 staff / workforce. They say the correct answer is staff. My question is why can't it be workforce also, in the Vocabulary Bank on Work p. 163 they say staff and workforce are the same, both in terms of meaning and register?

 

[Barque]

They may have been the same earlier, but the use of "staff" appears to have changed over the years and nowadays you do hear terms like "400 staff". However the use of "workforce" hasn't changed the same way.

In short, "400 staff" is used, though "400 staff members" or "400 members of staff" might be better.
But "400 workforce" would be wrong.

 

[Vanina Petrova]

Thank you very much. What is confusing though is the existence of examples like

• The factory has a 1 000-strong workforce. (Oxford Learner's Dictionaries) I find it difficult to grasp.

 

[Barque]

"1000-strong workforce" is a different structure and is correct. It's not the same as "1000 workforce", which is incorrect.

"1000-strong" is a valid idiomatic colocation. It refers to having a thousand of whatever's being talked about. So "1000-strong workforce" means "a workforce of a thousand people".

They have a workforce that's a thousand strong.
They have 1000 workforce.

 

[Vanina Petrova]

Thank you for the clarification.