29 U.S.C. § 1
Section 1 · Design and duties of bureau generally
Amended 4 times on record
Applied in 41 court decisions — leading case Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center v. Belshe (1996)
Most recently applied in New Concepts for Living Inc v. NLRB (March 2024)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
The general design and duties of the Bureau of Labor Statistics shall be to acquire and diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with labor, in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word, and especially upon its relation to capital, the hours of labor, the earnings of laboring men and women, and the means of promoting their material, social, intellectual, and moral prosperity.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Codification
Act June 27, 1884, created Bureau of Labor in Department of the Interior.
Section 1 of act June 13, 1888, created Department of Labor and outlined its general design and duties, and section 9 of that act transferred Bureau of Labor to Department of Labor.
Act Feb. 14, 1903, placed Department of Labor under jurisdiction and made it a part of Department of Commerce and Labor.
Act Mar. 18, 1904, changed name of Department of Labor to Bureau of Labor in Department of Commerce and Labor.
Act Mar. 4, 1913, created Department of Labor and transferred Bureau of Labor from Department of Commerce and Labor to newly created Department of Labor, redesignating such transferred Bureau as Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Transfer of Functions
For transfer of functions of other officers, employees, and agencies of Department of Labor, with certain exceptions, to Secretary of Labor, with power to delegate, see Reorg. Plan No. 6 of 1950, §§1, 2, 15 F.R. 3174, 64 Stat. 1263, set out in the Appendix to Title 5, Government Organization and Employees.