Trying to get COUNT(*) from custom content type with EntityFieldQuery
You can use EntityFieldQuery::count(), as reported in the documentation for EntityFieldQuery::execute().


  [The result is] Either a number if count() was called or an array of associative arrays of stub entities.


The code you should use is similar to the following one:

$query = new EntityFieldQuery;

$count = $query-&gt;entityCondition('entity_type', 'node')
  -&gt;entityCondition('bundle', 'employees')
  -&gt;propertyCondition('status', 1) // Getting published nodes only.
  -&gt;count()
  -&gt;execute();


To filter the result by the content type, you need to use EntityFieldQuery::entityCondition('bundle', $content_type).
For conditions on fields, you should use EntityFieldQuery::fieldCondition().