On this Labor Day weekend, many of us may be thinking of a quick retreat into summer vacation mode during the three-day break. It is a time to celebrate the return of college football and the promise of cooler temperatures.

There will be festivals, parades, good food cooked outdoors for perhaps one of the last times this year and a general sense of not only celebration, but transition.

Despite most public school boards’ best efforts, THIS is the traditional end of summer. And the break it offers is so appreciated because the people Labor Day is meant to honor have worked hard. They’ve earned it.

“American labor has raised the nation’s standard of living and contributed to the greatest production the world has ever known and the labor movement has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy,” says the U.S. Department of Labor’s History of Labor Day web page. “It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pays tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation’s strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.”

One of the possible founders of Labor Day, Peter J. McGuire, said in 1882 there should be a day set aside for “a general holiday for the laboring classes.” One of the first proposals for the day said it should include parades to exhibit “the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations.”

According to the Labor Department, the broader economic, civic, spiritual and educational significance of the day came later.

It evolves as our country’s workers have evolved. The majority of us are no longer farmers, blacksmiths or carpenters. Now, the most common job in the U.S. is fast food/counter workers, but fast-growing fields include wind turbine service technicians, solar photovoltaic installers, nurse practitioners, data scientists and information security analysts.

Despite the changes, the sentiment behind the holiday remains as important as it was more than 140 years ago.

Hard-working, ordinary men and women built this country and continue to be the reason it keeps moving forward. On this Labor Day weekend, we celebrate us.

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“Whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

“Without labor, nothing prospers.”

— Sophocles