The United States stands apart from most of the world in when it observes its Labor Day. Rather than joining the international May 1 tradition, the country marks the holiday on the first Monday of September each year, making it one of the few federal holidays that is permanently fixed to a Monday.

Labor Day exists to recognize the contributions and accomplishments of American workers, whose collective efforts shaped the country’s economy, built its industries, and developed its infrastructure.

The first celebration took place on September 5, 1882, in New York City. Thousands of workers took part in a parade through the city before coming together afterward for speeches, music, and picnics.

The question of who actually originated the holiday has never been definitively settled. Both Peter J. McGuire and Matthew Maguire have been put forward as the driving force behind it, and historians continue to disagree about which man deserves primary credit.

Labor Day did not achieve federal recognition until 1894, when President Grover Cleveland signed it into law during a period of significant labor unrest across the country.

A key event in that period was the Pullman Strike of 1894, a major and at times violent confrontation between workers and their employers that put the tensions running through American labor relations into sharp public focus and helped accelerate the push for a national holiday.

In contemporary American culture, Labor Day has become the unofficial close of summer. Many families use the long weekend for a final vacation, a backyard cookout, or simply time together before the season turns.

The holiday weekend is consistently one of the most congested travel periods of the year, with millions of people taking to the roads and filling airports.

For much of the country, Labor Day also marks the transition into the school year, falling just before or just after classes resume. That said, the pattern is not universal. A growing number of schools across the country now begin instruction in August rather than waiting until after the holiday.

Parades honoring workers across a wide range of trades and professions have historically been a central feature of Labor Day observances, with labor unions often playing a prominent role.

Over time the holiday has accumulated other traditions as well. Cookouts, community gatherings, sporting events, and family reunions have become just as characteristic of the day as the labor movement history that gave rise to it.

The holiday’s roots in organized labor have not stopped some Republican lawmakers from attempting to reframe it as a celebration of business owners, whom they often describe as job creators, shifting the emphasis away from workers themselves.