The Fair Labor Standards Act, a 1938 law guaranteeing time off for full-time employees, led to the modern vacation.

Hear an interview with Harvard Law School employee and labor law expert Sharon Block about how the parallel motivations of workers, employers, and government officials led to the creation of the National Labor Relations Act.

A 1966 amendment created the “tip credit,” which allowed restaurants to pay below minimum wage if tips compensated the difference. However, this federal tipped minimum wage has remained frozen at $2.13 per hour since 1991, whereas the regular minimum wage has increased multiple times since then.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal created new government agencies and programs in the wake of the Great Depression, including the Social Security Act.

Specifically, the Retail Dry Goods Association warned Franklin Roosevelt that if the holiday season didn’t begin until after Americans celebrated Thanksgiving on the traditional final Thursday in November, retail sales would tank. In 1941 Congress passed a law that made Thanksgiving the fourth rather than the last Thursday in November.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt named her the United States Secretary of Labor in 1933. In her cabinet seat, she not only helped establish the first federal minimum wage in the US, but also the Social Security Act.

In the waning years of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt attempted to move Thanksgiving up by a week, giving merchants a longer holiday shopping season. After pushback from lawmakers, he reversed course in 1941, permanently fixing the date of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November.

Pay transparency—once considered taboo—is gaining momentum. Despite being legally protected since 1935, open salary discussions have only recently become more common, especially among younger workers. This overview explores how cultural norms, economic shifts, and new state laws are reshaping the conversation around what we earn.

Many of these, such as German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's 1889 retirement system, emerged decades before America adopted them. This article dives into the modern history of economic security and the key legislation that created Social Security.

If you want all the details about when and why these rate increases happened check out this resource from the US Department of Labor.

During the Great Depression, 1,000 homes were foreclosed on per day, and half of the mortgages across the country defaulted. To address this crisis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the National Housing Act. It established the Federal Housing Administration, which is still around today and helps protect lenders and buyers.

Though it looks different in other countries, economic historians trace retirement's rise in the US to a growth in personal income through pensions, GDP, and Social Security.

The Ludlow Amendment, proposed amid rising isolationism after World War I, would have required a national referendum before Congress could declare war, except in cases of direct attack. It was defeated 209 to 188 in 1938 after Roosevelt lobbied against it.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal created new government agencies and programs in the wake of the Great Depression.

After Franklin D. Roosevelt won four elections, Congress moved to prevent future presidents from holding power indefinitely. Ratified in 1951, the 22nd Amendment set a firm two-term limit as a safeguard against extended presidencies.

In 1934, President Roosevelt became the first president to formally call the annual address the "State of the Union," replacing the older title "Annual Message to Congress" and using the language from the Constitution.

In 1866, newly freed black women working as laundresses in Jackson, Mississippi, formed a union and went on strike for higher wages. But it wasn't until 1974, that the Coalition of Labor Union Women was founded as America's only national organization for union women. Want to find out more about the history of women in the labor movement? Click here for the full timeline.

Eleven months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt outlined four fundamental freedoms that, in his words, people "everywhere in the world" ought to enjoy—speech, worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

While there are many different types of labor unions, they are, generally speaking, organizations workers form to improve aspects of their working conditions, such as vacation time or discipline processes.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression expanded federal power through economic regulation and social welfare programs, permanently reshaping federalism by shifting responsibility for financial security to Washington while leaving states to administer many of these programs.

Henry Ford's revolution of the assembly line and American manufacturing as a whole gave rise to the American middle class. The introduction of the $5 workday (in exchange for eight-hour days of highly repetitive work) raised factory workers' wages enough to reorient the economy around consumer demand.

FDR expanded presidential power through the New Deal, World War II leadership, and direct communication with the public. He redefined the executive branch as an active policymaking force and established expectations for strong, interventionist presidential leadership.

The Civil Rights Act, signed into law in 1964, prohibited racial segregation in public accommodations and ended discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin in employment, while also strengthening protections in education. It established protections enforced across federally funded programs.

Congress established the original H-1 visa in 1952 through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to let US employers temporarily hire foreign professionals of "distinguished merit and ability" when qualified American workers were unavailable—a precursor to today's H-1B program.

In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt formally recognized the Soviet Union—ending 16 years of nonrecognition and aiming to improve trade and stabilize relations amid growing global instability.

Before 1921, federal funding was fragmented and ad hoc. This article traces how inefficiency and postwar pressures led Congress to pass the Budget and Accounting Act, creating a standardized, centralized federal budgeting process.

Remote workers took 5.5% less annual vacation time than their on-site counterparts, according to one 2023 study. The researchers found that remote workers were 22% less likely to take any vacation time at all, and that when they did go on vacation, they tended to take less total time off.

The date marks the 1791 ratification of the first 10 amendments. President Franklin D. Roosevelt officially established Bill of Rights Day in 1941, on the document's 150th anniversary. Hear the speech he gave on that day.

Congress enacted RFRA in response to the Supreme Court's decision in Employment Division v. Smith. The law requires the government to use the least restrictive means before substantially burdening an individual's religious exercise.

Congress enacted the International Religious Freedom Act to make promoting religious freedom abroad a stated goal of US foreign policy. The law established an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom and mandated that the State Department report annually on the status of religious freedom.

The US government hasn’t increased the federal minimum wage in more than a decade. Some people argue it's wrong that Congress needs to debate whether or not to raise the minimum wage—and that perhaps these raises should be tied to inflation.

The early days of the record industry looked much different than they do now. There were few national record labels and there were organized musicians who viewed themselves more as day laborers rather than artists. That allowed for an organized strike by the American Federation of Musicians.

Many of the Social Security functions we know today are the result of multiple amendments to the Social Security Act that have been passed in the years since the act’s initial creation in 1935. As Social Security as we know it today was being conceptualized, Democrats opted to make it an insurance program rather than a welfare one to assuage Republicans.