Davis–Bacon Act of 1931
US law on wages for public works
The Davis–Bacon Act of 1931 is a United States federal law that establishes the requirement for paying the local prevailing wages on public works projects for laborers and mechanics. It applies to "contractors and subcontractors performing on federally funded or assisted contracts in excess of $2,000 for the construction, alteration, or repair (including painting and decorating) of public buildings or public works".
The act is named after its sponsors, James J. Davis, a Senator from Pennsylvania and a former Secretary of Labor under three presidents, and Representative Robert L. Bacon of Long Island, New York. The Davis–Bacon act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Herbert Hoover on March 3, 1931.
As of 2016, the act increases the cost of wages in federal construction projects by an average of $1.4 billion per year.
History
Leading to passage
Prior to the passage of the federal Davis–Bacon Act (abbreviated DBA), other jurisdictions in the United States had passed laws that required that contractors on public works projects pay the wage that prevailed locally. "In 1891, Kansas adopted a law requiring that ‘not less than the current rate of per diem wages in the locality where the work is performed shall be paid to laborers, workmen, mechanics, and other persons so employed by or on behalf of the state of Kansas’ or of other local jurisdictions. Through the next several decades, other states followed suit, enacting a variety of labor-protective statutes covering workers in contract production."
In 1927, a contractor employed African-American workers from Alabama to build a Veterans' Bureau hospital in the district of Congressman Bacon. Prompted by concerns about the conditions of workers, displacement of local workers by migrant workers, and competitive pressure toward lower wages, Bacon introduced the first version of his bill in 1927.
Over the next few years, Bacon attempted to introduce variations on the prevailing wage bill 13 times.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Davis–Bacon Act of 1931” is uS law on wages for public works. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Davis, Bacon and wages, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5242034. VIAF identifies the subject as 177272530. The Library of Congress control number is no2006070035. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1931, 2016, 1891 and 1927.
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This entry incorporates text from “Davis–Bacon Act of 1931” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.