Holiday Calendar

Labor Day

Next celebratedMonday, September 6, 2027

The story goes that troops broke the Pullman Strike and Labor Day followed to settle things. The Statutes at Large run the other way: Cleveland signed the act on June 28, 1894, and dated the military proclamation ten days after.

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Last updated September 6, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEFirst Monday in September
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYFederal
ORIGIN

Enacted Law

FOUNDING ENTITY
United States Congress
FIRST OBSERVED
1894
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A one-sentence act for a day already kept.

New York's Central Labor Union held the first Labor Day on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, and Oregon passed the first state law recognizing it on February 21, 1887. President Grover Cleveland approved the federal act on June 28, 1894, a single sentence whose operative text never says Labor Day and instead makes a legal public holiday of "the day celebrated and known as Labor's Holiday".

Read the federal holidays statutevia Office of the Law Revision Counsel
INTRO

Signed ten days before the military proclamation

The story that circulates about Labor Day puts the troops first. In it, federal soldiers break the Pullman Strike and the holiday follows, to calm the tensions left behind. A Library of Congress research guide still prints that order.

Two documents in one volume of the Statutes at Large run the other way. Grover Cleveland approved the Labor Day act on June 28, 1894. His proclamation reciting that the President "has employed a part of the military forces of the United States" in Illinois is dated the eighth day of July, ten days later.

The order is all these two documents settle. They do not say the strike produced the holiday, and they do not say the holiday answered the strike. They only say which was signed first, and that was the act.

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ORIGINS

Labor Day history

INTRODUCTION

At ten on the morning of September 5, 1882, the first Labor Day was not happening. The Grand Marshall, William McCabe, was in place with his police escort, and nobody had moved. The few marchers who had come had no music.

Then Mathew Maguire of the Central Labor Union ran across the lawn: two hundred marchers from the Jewelers Union of Newark Two had crossed the ferry with a band. The jewelers turned onto lower Broadway playing "When I First Put This Uniform On," from Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience.

CHAPTER 01

The day spread through the statehouses

The union held a second Labor Day the next year, again on September 5, 1883. New York was the first state to introduce a bill, but Oregon was the first to pass one, on February 21, 1887.

Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York followed during 1887. The date itself was still unsettled. The House Historian, citing the Washington Post, records a celebration that fell on the first day, the first Monday or the first Saturday of September, by locality.

CHAPTER 02

Two men with the same claim

The Labor Department has not settled who thought of the day. Its own history declines to: "It's not entirely clear, but two workers can make a solid claim to the Founder of Labor Day title."

One claim is Peter J. McGuire's, of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, who called for a "general holiday for the laboring classes" in 1882. The other is Matthew Maguire's, secretary of the Central Labor Union that year, whose case recent research "seems to support." The department does not even hold his spelling steady, writing Matthew on one page and Mathew on the other.

CHAPTER 03

The bill nobody hurried

The law was not written that summer. S. 730 reached the Senate in August 1893 and then, the House Historian records, sat for ten months without debate. Once leaders brought it to the floor it passed quickly.

Four days later, on June 26, 1894, Lawrence McGann of Illinois took the Senate bill up in the House, setting aside an earlier version from Amos Cummings of New York. It passed with no objection.

Cleveland approved it on June 28, 1894. The act makes the first Monday of September a legal public holiday "in the same manner as Christmas ... and the fourth day of July." That is the entire law.

TIMELINE

Timeline

First Labor Day in New York

The Central Labor Union held it on Tuesday, September 5, and reports of the turnout ranged from 10,000 to 20,000 marchers.

Oregon passes the first state law

Oregon recognized Labor Day on February 21, and Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York followed the same year.

S. 730 reaches the Senate

The bill was introduced in August and then waited ten months without debate.

Cleveland approves the act

He approved chapter 118, 28 Stat. 96, on June 28, making the first Monday of September a legal public holiday.

Proclamation on the Illinois disturbances

On July 8 Cleveland issued a proclamation reciting that the President had employed part of the military forces of the United States in Illinois and Chicago.

Monday Holiday Act passes it over

Public Law 90-363 moved Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day and Veterans Day to Mondays and added Columbus Day, and left Labor Day alone.
Let us each Labor day, hold a congress and formulate propositions for the amelioration of the people. Send them to your Representatives with your earnest, intelligent indorsement, and the laws will be changed.
Lawrence McGannChairman of the House Labor Committee, at the first official Labor Day parade in Chicago
the souvenir pen should go to Alderman Matthew Maguire of this city, who is the undisputed author of Labor Day as a holiday
Paterson Morning CallNew Jersey newspaper, in an opinion piece after Cleveland signed

BY THE NUMBERS

Labor Day by the Numbers

700
First division of the 1882 New York parade
~25,000
Wendel's Elm Park crowd, New York, 1882
30,000
Chicago Labor Day crowd, 1894
10,000
Baltimore Labor Day crowd, 1894

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why Labor Day Matters

PRECEDENT

Earlier federal holidays marked events. This one marked work.

Congress's own research service writes that the federal holidays before it marked traditional celebrations, patriotic celebrations, war, or individuals. It says Labor Day was "Created to honor the country's labor" and "stood in contrast" to all of them.

CIVICS

What the House committee said it was for

As quoted by the Congressional Research Service, the House Committee on Labor wrote when reporting its own version of the bill that national holidays exist "to emphasize some great event or principle in the minds of the people by giving them a day of rest and recreation, a day of enjoyment, in commemoration of it." The same report argued that the day would help ensure "that the nobility of labor [will] be maintained."

UNIONS

A smaller share of workers in unions

The union membership rate was 10.0 percent in 2025, against 20.1 percent in 1983, the first year of comparable data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics warns that its 2025 estimates leave out October, when the federal shutdown stopped the survey, and are not strictly comparable with other years.

GOOD TO KNOW

Labor Day Around the World

Canada

the Interpretation Act defines a holiday to include "the first Monday in September, designated Labour Day," and the Canada Labour Code lists Labour Day among the federal general holidays

Worldwide

US labor organizations began annual May 1 parades to commemorate a tragic set of events in 1886 Chicago, and by 1890 May Day had become International Workers' Day, kept since under names including Workers' Day and Labour Day

United States

36 U.S.C. 115 makes May 1 Loyalty Day, "a special day for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom"

GET INVOLVED

How to Observe Labor Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Watch a parade and stay for the picnic

The first proposal paired a street parade showing "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" with a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. That 1882 plan is the template the day still follows.

READ

Read the agency account of the 1882 morning

The Labor Department's Labor Daze follows September 5, 1882 from an empty street to a party that ran until nine at night. The New York Tribune described spectators filling "the windows and roofs and even the lamp posts and awning frames."

LOOK

Look up union membership in your own occupation

The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts education, training and library occupations at 32.5 percent and protective service occupations at 31.3 percent, the two highest occupational rates it reports. Those 2025 figures come from 11-month averages that exclude October, so the bureau warns they are not strictly comparable with earlier years.

COMPARE

Compare the two federal accounts of the route

The Library of Congress marches the 1882 crowd from City Hall past Union Square and uptown to 42nd Street. The Labor Department has it reaching Reservoir Park at noon, with most of the marchers going on to Wendel's Elm Park at 92nd Street and Ninth Avenue.

MARK

Mark the Sunday the AFL set aside in 1909

By a resolution of its 1909 convention, the American Federation of Labor adopted the Sunday preceding Labor Day as Labor Sunday. The resolution dedicated it to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know Labor Day?

1 / 7

Which state was the first to pass a Labor Day law?

Answer

It is a legal public holiday listed in 5 U.S.C. 6103, which is why federal employees have the day off. The Congressional Research Service adds that federal holidays are only legally applicable to federal employees and the District of Columbia, because the states individually decide their own legal holidays.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

13sources
10primary records
5independently dated
Primary records
Library of Congress1895
The Statutes at Large of the United States of America, from August, 1893, to March, 1895, vol. 28
The session laws, carrying the Labor Day act at page 96 and Cleveland's July proclamation at page 1249.
View source
U.S. House, Office of the Law Revision Counsel2026-09
5 U.S.C. 6103: Holidays
The codified list of legal public holidays, with the 1968 amendment note and the derivation from 28 Stat. 96.
View source
U.S. House of Representatives, History, Art & Archives
The First Labor Day
The legislative chronology of S. 730, and the turnout at the first statutory Labor Day.
View source
Congressional Research Service2021-07
Federal Holidays: Evolution and Current Practices (R41990)
Who federal holidays legally bind, and the House Committee on Labor's reasoning for this one.
View source
U.S. Department of Labor
History of Labor Day
The agency's official history: the 1882 observance, Oregon's first state law, and the unsettled founder.
View source
U.S. Department of Labor
Labor Daze: Pride, Chaos and Kegs on Labor's First 'Day'
A minute-by-minute account of the morning of September 5, 1882 in lower Manhattan.
View source
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics2026-02
Union Members - 2025 (USDL-26-0229)
Union membership rates by sector and occupation, with the agency's warning about the 2025 estimates.
View source
U.S. House, Office of the Law Revision Counsel2026-09
36 U.S.C. 115: Loyalty Day
The statute designating May 1 as Loyalty Day and stating its purpose.
View source
Justice Laws Website, Government of Canada
Interpretation Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. I-21, section 35
The Canadian definition placing Labour Day on the first Monday in September.
View source
Justice Laws Website, Government of Canada
Canada Labour Code, section 166
Labour Day's place in the federal list of general holidays for federally regulated employees.
View source
Additional coverage
Library of Congress
Today in History - September 5: The First Labor Day
The route and size of the 1882 New York parade, and the continuing debate over who had the idea.
View source
Library of Congress
Labor Day, This Month in Business History
A research guide presenting the 1894 act as a response to the Pullman strike.
View source
Library of Congress
Today in History - May 1: May Day as Workers' Day
How May 1 became International Workers' Day, and its US designation as Loyalty Day.
View source
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