noun
Dated and sensitive term for a manual worker or labourer. Modern Japanese prefers 作業員 or 労働者 in most contexts.
昔の文書には、工夫という言葉が肉体労働者を指して使われている。
In old documents, the word 工夫 is used to refer to manual labourers.
The historical derivation is uncertain; the kanji 工夫 are conventionally associated with the meaning 'labourer' in this reading.