The War Manpower Commission was a federal agency that ran from April 1942 to September 1945 and controlled how the United States allocated its civilian workforce during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created it by Executive Order 9139 on April 18, 1942, placing it inside the Executive Office of the President and giving it authority over the recruitment, training, and distribution of American workers between war industries and the armed forces.1The American Presidency Project. Executive Order 9139 – Establishing the War Manpower Commission in the Executive Office of the President For the duration of the war, it decided which industries had first claim on labor, whether a worker could quit a job, and, in coordination with the Selective Service System, who could stay in a factory instead of being drafted.
How It Was Created and Who Ran It
Executive Order 9139 was issued under the First War Powers Act of 1941 and charged the commission with “the most effective mobilization and utilization of the national manpower.”1The American Presidency Project. Executive Order 9139 – Establishing the War Manpower Commission in the Executive Office of the President Paul V. McNutt, already head of the Federal Security Agency, was named chairman.
The commission was structured as an interagency board. Executive Order 9139 seated representatives from the War Department, Navy Department, Department of Agriculture, Department of Labor, the War Production Board, the Selective Service System, and the Civil Service Commission, so decisions about labor supply reflected the competing pulls of food, munitions, and troop mobilization at the same table.
Field operations ran through numbered regional offices covering all 48 states, the District of Columbia, and a territorial office, with hundreds of local area offices below them.2National Archives. Records of the War Manpower Commission After Executive Order 9247 transferred the U.S. Employment Service to the commission, that service became the local face of the agency for workers and employers in labor-shortage areas.3The American Presidency Project. Executive Order 9247 – Transferring Certain Employment Service and Training Functions to the War Manpower Commission
What It Did to Workers and Employers
The commission’s most direct reach into daily working life came through employment stabilization plans. In areas with critical labor shortages, workers in high-priority industries were effectively frozen in place. Anyone who wanted to leave such a job had to obtain a statement of availability, a government-issued document confirming that the move would not hurt war production. Employers were barred from hiring workers out of high-priority fields who lacked one. A worker who left without the certificate faced a waiting period before being hired elsewhere, eventually extended to 60 days.
These rules replaced the ordinary labor market. Non-essential businesses faced hiring limits and were often required to release employees so they could move into shipyards, aircraft plants, and munitions factories. Wage competition for scarce workers, the normal way employers attract labor, was largely eliminated.
The 48-Hour Workweek
Executive Order 9301 declared that no plant was making effective use of its manpower if employees worked fewer than 48 hours per week, and it authorized the chairman to raise or lower that floor for particular industries.4The American Presidency Project. Executive Order 9301 – Establishing a Minimum Wartime Workweek of Forty-Eight Hours Six-day weeks became the baseline in war industries, with additional overtime common when production demanded it.
The Essential Activities List
Underpinning everything was the List of Essential Activities and a companion list of critical occupations. An interagency Essential Activities Committee, drawing from the War, Navy, and Agriculture Departments, the War Production Board, and the Bureau of Selective Service, kept both lists under continuous review.2National Archives. Records of the War Manpower Commission A job on the list meant a stronger case for a draft deferment and tighter limits on switching employers. A job that dropped off the list could mean reclassification and induction.
How It Worked With the Draft
Executive Order 9279 transferred the Selective Service System to the commission, putting civilian labor allocation and military conscription under a single chain of command.5The American Presidency Project. Executive Order 9279 – Providing for the Most Effective Mobilization and Utilization of the National Manpower The idea was that one agency should be able to judge whether a skilled machinist did more for the war on the factory floor or in uniform.
That integration produced the “work or fight” pressure that defined the wartime labor market for men of draft age. Local draft boards took guidance from the commission on occupational deferments. Men in non-essential work were pushed toward war production or into military service, and defying a commission directive could move a man to the top of the induction list. It also let the government keep specialized engineers, toolmakers, and experienced supervisors in the plants that needed them rather than losing them to the draft.
Training and Recruitment
Managing existing workers was only part of the job. The commission also had to bring new ones into industry, and quickly.
Training Within Industry
The Training Within Industry program was the commission’s most durable contribution. Built on an instructional method developed during World War I, it taught supervisors how to train new workers consistently. Its core modules covered Job Instructions (breaking tasks down and teaching them step by step), Job Relations (handling personnel problems on the shop floor), and Job Methods (improving how work was actually performed), with a fourth module, Program Development, aimed at identifying production bottlenecks.
Women and Minority Workers
With millions of men entering the military, the commission recruited from groups that had largely been kept out of industrial work. National campaigns urged homemakers into factories, and federally funded vocational programs taught welding, riveting, and aircraft assembly.
Minority employment in war industries rose sharply during the same period. Nonwhite workers made up less than 3 percent of the workforce in firms reporting to the commission in early 1942; by November 1944, that figure had risen to 8.3 percent.6GovInfo. First Report, Fair Employment Practice Committee The growth was real, uneven, and happened against persistent discrimination the commission was not well equipped to police.
College-Level Technical Training
The commission also drew on the Engineering, Science, and Management War Training program, run through the U.S. Office of Education, which provided free college-level technical courses to civilians moving into war production roles. Roughly 227 colleges and universities delivered about 68,000 courses to nearly 1.8 million students, at a total cost of around $60 million. The Office of Education recommended against granting academic credit for the courses to avoid the appearance of a federal subsidy to the participating schools.
The Enforcement Problem
The commission’s authority looked broader on paper than it was in practice. It operated almost entirely through executive orders, and Congress repeatedly declined to give it statutory teeth; a bill that would have granted direct enforcement authority was rejected in early 1945. McNutt relied on indirect leverage: threatening reclassification of a worker’s draft status, withholding labor referrals from uncooperative employers, or publicly identifying non-compliant businesses.
Employers who ignored commission directives faced no criminal penalties. Workers who broke stabilization rules risked the waiting period before reemployment but could not be jailed. Compared with wartime labor controls in Britain or the Soviet Union, the American system leaned heavily on voluntary compliance and the implicit threat of the draft.
Discrimination and the Fair Employment Practice Committee
Because the commission decided where workers went, it sat next to a separate agency that policed how they were treated. Executive Order 8802 had created the Fair Employment Practice Committee in 1941 to investigate discrimination in defense industries, and once the commission took over labor allocation, the two agencies had overlapping jurisdiction over war employers.
Executive Order 9346 directed the FEPC to recommend measures to the commission’s chairman for “bringing about the full utilization and training of manpower in and for war production without discrimination.” The FEPC used the commission’s List of Essential War Industries as a rough guide to its own jurisdiction while reserving the right to decide independently whether a given employer counted. A formal cooperation agreement between the two agencies was reached on August 2, 1943.6GovInfo. First Report, Fair Employment Practice Committee Neither agency had strong enforcement tools, and the tension between allocation and non-discrimination was never fully resolved.
How It Differed From the National War Labor Board
The War Manpower Commission is often confused with the National War Labor Board, but the two handled different problems. The War Labor Board, created by Executive Order 9017 in January 1942, dealt with labor disputes and wage stabilization.7National Archives. Records of the National War Labor Board (World War II) When a union and an employer disagreed over pay or working conditions, the War Labor Board stepped in. The War Manpower Commission controlled the labor supply itself: who worked where, how many workers each industry needed, and whether a person could change jobs. One agency governed the terms of employment; the other governed the movement of workers.
How and When It Ended
The commission did not outlast the war by long. On September 19, 1945, President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9617, terminating the War Manpower Commission and transferring nearly all of its functions, personnel, and records to the Department of Labor.8The American Presidency Project. Executive Order 9617 – Transfer of Certain Agencies and Functions to the Department of Labor The chairman’s authority passed to the Secretary of Labor, and the U.S. Employment Service returned to civilian management. The Procurement and Assignment Service, which had handled medical and health professionals, went instead to the Federal Security Administrator. The same order also moved the National War Labor Board into the Department of Labor.
What remained were the institutional traces: the Training Within Industry methods influenced manufacturing management for decades, and the wartime experience of mass female and minority workforce participation reshaped expectations about who belonged in American industry.