Works Progress Administration, also called the WPA, was a United States government agency created in 1935 to provide paying jobs for unemployed workers. Most of these workers had lost their jobs during the Great Depression, a worldwide economic slump that began in 1929. The WPA was part of the New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's program of economic recovery during the depression. In 1939, the WPA was renamed the Work Projects Administration. Before the WPA was disbanded in 1943, it had provided some employment for about 81/2 million people.