Chicago's 2025 Labor Day: "most violent holiday weekend" this summer
Chicago's 2021 Labor Day: "Hold my beer!"
This recent Labor Day weekend was Chicago’s most violent of the summer, with over 60 people shot (9 fatally) between 5 p.m. Friday and 5 a.m. Tuesday.1 Over a quarter of those wounded or killed (16) were victimized in mass shootings. (The type of mass shootings that don’t receive national media attention.)
My nationwide analysis of fatal and non-fatal shootings occurring any time on Friday through Monday of Labor Day weekend found Chicago had more shootings (58) than in the next five cities combined (52).2
Chicago consistently leads U.S. Cities in Labor Day shooting counts, but not rates per 100,000. For instance, Chicago’s population is roughly 2.7m compared to 1.6m for Philadelphia. Columbus, Georgia (pop. 201,000) is a top contender for highest rate of Labor Day shootings among these cities.3
Still, people aren’t calculating violent crime rates per 100,000 in their heads to reassure themselves about the amount of firearm violence occurring in their community or elsewhere. 60 shootings over a long weekend is a lot, even for one of our largest U.S. cities. Citizens everywhere (including non-Chicagoans) are allowed to be worried, upset, or outraged even if violent crime has recently been decreasing.
Bad stats, worse optics
Labor Day violence in Chicago notably included three mass shootings.
From Chicago Sun Times:
Around 11:10 p.m. Saturday, a group of people were standing in the 3500 block of South State Street when a vehicle drove by and someone inside opened fire, Chicago police said. Seven people between the ages of 28 and 32 were wounded and taken to various hospitals in good condition.
Hours later, in the second mass shooting of the weekend, multiple shooters opened fire on a group in the 2700 block of West Haddon Avenue, police said. All four victims, between the ages of 26 and 39, were listed in good condition.
The third mass shooting happened early Monday morning in the 3600 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue. The five victims, ranging in age from 17 to 33, were listed in good to critical condition at different hospitals.
Two things can be true at once
Unacceptable, disturbing levels of gun violence occurred in Chicago over Labor Day weekend.
Chicago violent crime rates (driven by firearm violence) are trending downward, potentially historically, in line with most other U.S. cities.
Chicago's 2021 Labor Day: "Hold my beer!"
Compared to the recent high water mark (75) set for Labor Day shootings in 2021, Chicago’s 2025 stats look less bad. Compared to the previous two years, however, they signal a reversal at worst and an aberration at best.
Considering whether Labor Day weekend was an anomaly is a useful exercise because holiday weekends are gun violence bellwethers.
Memorial Day weekend was significantly less violent (in Chicago and most cities) in 2025 than previous years.
If this trend was reversed by fall, it might suggest recent declines in firearm violence are less stable and enduring than projected. Fortunately, there wasn’t an alarming widespread uptick in firearm violence this Labor Day weekend. Among 83 U.S. cities with 400,000 residents, only 15 cities saw more shootings than in 2024, with 12 also exceeding their 2014-2019 averages. The remaining had fewer or stable rates of shootings.
Scroll through the charts at the end of this post to see the picture emerging out of Labor Day weekend in selected cities with the highest number of shootings.
National Context
Selected Cities
This is the timeframe typically used by the Chicago Sun Times to track holiday weekend shootings. I track all day Friday through Monday, as noted. Tallies differ accordingly.
This list includes: Philadelphia (16 shootings, 3 fatalities); Brooklyn (9 shootings, 0 fatalities); Bronx (9 shootings, 1 fatality); Memphis (8 shootings, 1 fatality)
Since 2014, over 12,000 U.S. communities have reported at least one Labor Day shooting. I don’t maintain a comprehensive dataset including population sizes for each of these communities. I am not claiming that Columbus Georgia has the highest Labor Day shooting rate of any U.S. community, just that it’s rate appears to be the highest among the top 15 cities with the most shootings in 2025 based on my back-of-the-envelope calculation and working knowledge of the population sizes of the other 14 cities ranked here.