Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was a work program for the unemployed that was created in 1935 under U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The WPA was a centerpiece of the “Second New Deal,” whose programs, including Social Security, were implemented between 1935 and 1938 and intended to offer relief, recovery, and reform for millions of Americans still suffering from the ravages of the Great Depression. In essence, the WPA created millions of jobs in fields as diverse as construction and the arts to bolster the living standards and self-esteem of struggling citizens.

During its eight-year existence, the WPA put some 8.5 million people to work (more than 11 million were unemployed in 1934) at a cost to the federal government of approximately $11 billion (or more than $260 billion in 2026 dollars). The agency’s construction projects produced more than 650,000 miles (1,046,000 km) of roads; 125,000 public buildings; 75,000 bridges; 8,000 parks; and 800 airports, including La Guardia Airport in New York City. Championed by key Roosevelt adviser Harry Hopkins, who became the first WPA director, the job-creating mission of the WPA was more costly than simply providing assistance to unemployed Americans. But Hopkins believed that in addition to providing needed infrastructure improvements across the country, the program would give hope and dignity to the workers that the federal government employed. Another goal of the program was to stimulate the economy as a whole, meaning that workers, whose wages under the program ranged from $15 to $90 per month, could then spend some of that money on other goods and services.

The WPA also made public art central to its mission. The Federal Art Project, Federal Writers’ Project, and Federal Theatre Project—all under the program’s aegis—employed thousands of artists, writers, and actors in such cultural programs as the creation of artwork for public buildings, the documentation of local life, and the organization of community theaters; thousands of artists, architects, construction workers, and educators found work in American museums, which flourished during the Great Depression. The WPA also initially sponsored the National Youth Administration, which sought part-time jobs for young people. The WPA employed photographers and stenographers to interview Americans about their lives to capture folklore and history that would have been lost. That work included verbatim interviews with formerly enslaved people, giving voice to a population unlikely to have had their stories told otherwise.

For all its success, the WPA had its critics. Reflective of the nation as a whole in the 1930s and ’40s, the program discriminated against women, Black Americans, and immigrants. Because only one member of a household could hold a WPA job, for the most part, only women who were the heads of their household could work. In the segregated South (and some parts of the North), Black Americans were given the most menial, least desirable jobs. Immigrants also struggled to find work, and in 1939 the program was closed to anyone who was not a citizen.

The program also came under political scrutiny, with critics deriding the “make work” nature of the jobs and seeing it as a way to buy allegiance to FDR’s Democratic Party. The arts program, which accounted for 1 percent of total WPA spending, was a frequent target, but Hopkins dismissed those who questioned paying creatives with federal funds, saying: “Hell! They’ve got to eat just like other people.”

In 1939 the Works Progress Administration changed its name to Work Projects Administration. In that year increasing charges of mismanagement and of abuse of the program by workers led to a reduction in funding, and a strike by construction workers against wage cuts was unsuccessful. In 1943, with the virtual elimination of unemployment by a wartime economy, the WPA was ended.