Labor love

Wow your friends with these facts this Labor Day

This article was published on 08.30.18

Did you know that the very first Labor Day celebration was a parade in New York City in April 1882? Twelve years later, several states had joined the movement and held “workingmen’s holidays.” That same year, 1894, President Grover Cleveland deemed the first Monday in September to be Labor Day. In honor of the upcoming holiday (on Monday, Sept. 1), here are some more facts, updated in 2017, to wow your friends with at barbecues:

• As of May 2017, there were 159.8 million people employed in the United States age 16 and older.

• The top five most popular occupations are: retail sales (4.5 million), cashier (3.5 million), food prep and serving (3.4 million), office clerk (3 million) and registered nurse (2.9 million).

• In 2015, there were 15.3 million women and 11.7 million men in the service industry.

• Labor Day is widely recognized as the unofficial end of summer, which inspired the taboo of wearing white afterward (which isn’t really followed anymore) because white apparently signified “vacation mode.”

• Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, Americans wolf down an average of 7 billion hot dogs, according to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau and constitutioncenter.org