President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized Hopkins to set up the Civil Works Administration (CWA) in November, 1933. William E. Leuchtenburg, the author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (1963), has pointed out: "CWA was a federal operation from top to bottom; CWA workers were on the federal payroll. The agency took half its workers from relief rolls; the other half were people who needed jobs, but who did not have to demonstrate their poverty by submitting to a means test. CWA did not give a relief stipend but paid minimum wages. Hopkins, called on to mobilize in one winter almost as many men as had served in the armed forces in World War I, had to invent jobs for four million men and women in thirty days and put them to work. By mid-January, at its height, the CWA employed 4,230,000 persons."

During the four months of its existence, the CWA built or improved some 500,000 miles of roads, 40,000 schools, over 3,500 playgrounds and athletic fields, and 1,000 airports. The CWA employed 50,000 teachers to keep rural schools open and to teach adult education classes in the cities. The CWA also hired 3,000 artists and writers. It has been estimated that the CWA put a billion dollars of purchasing power into the sagging economy.

Roosevelt became concerned about creating a permanent class of people on relief work. He told Hopkins: "We must be careful it does not become a habit with the country... We must not take the position that we are going to have permanent depression in this country, and it is very important that we have somebody to say that quite forcefully to these people." Despite the protest of political figures such as Robert LaFollette and Bronson Cutting, the program came to an end in March, 1934.