Community Corner

Labor Day: By the Numbers

With the first observance of Labor Day said to have been on Sept. 5, 1882 in New York City, Patch takes a look at the working environment now.

About 10,000 workers in New York City marched around town in celebration of the country's first unofficial Labor Day on Sept. 5, 1882, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Congress then passed a bill to establish Labor Day as a federal observance in 1894, and President Grover Cleveland signed it, designating the first Monday in September as the holiday.

Here's some more facts and figures about the day devoted to the nation's workforce:

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153.2 million: Number of people 16 and older in the nation's labor force in July 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

3.2 million: Number of workers who face extreme commutes to work of 90 or more minutes each day, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

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5.9 million: The number of people who work from home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

3,039,523: The number of teachers, preschool to grade 12, in 2009, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the same year, 101,889 were computer operators and about 10,980 were actors.

$47,127 and $36,278: The 2009 real median earnings for male and female full-time, year-round workers, respectively.

25.1: The average time it takes in minutes for people in the nation to commute to work. New York and Maryland had the most time-consuming commutes, averaging 31.4 and 31.3 minutes, according to a 2009 U.S. Census Bureau survey.


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