Frances Perkins died in New York City at the age of 85, having transformed American labor law and social policy.
Frances Perkins died on May 14, 1965, in New York City at the age of 85. By the time of her death, she had lived to see the full flowering of the New Deal programs she helped architect, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, and federal labor standards, become permanent and widely accepted pillars of American life.
In her later years, following her tenure as Secretary of Labor (1933–1945), Perkins continued to serve the public, including a stint on the U.S. Civil Service Commission under Presidents Truman and briefly under Eisenhower. She also taught and lectured at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, mentoring new generations of students in labor policy and public administration until close to her death.
Her passing marked the end of an era for New Deal-generation reformers, but her institutional legacy endured. The Frances Perkins Building, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., was named in her honor in 1980, a rare distinction for a woman of her generation.
She is remembered as one of the most influential unelected public officials in American history, whose vision for economic security and worker protection reshaped the relationship between the American government and its citizens. Her grave is in Newcastle, Maine, near the family homestead she cherished throughout her life.