Tired of eating dinner in the dark? Don’t worry – the start of daylight saving time is just around the corner, though "springing forward" by one hour may leave you feeling tired at breakfast instead.
The final month of meteorological winter comes to a close next week and soon after it will be time to trade an hour of sleep for more evening daylight.
While the United States is currently in standard time, much of the country will switch to daylight time beginning on March 9.
Daylight saving time is then in effect through the first Sunday of November in most of the U.S.
The switch will lead to more daylight in the evening, as people set their clocks one hour ahead.
In the U.S., daylight saving time lasts for a total of 34 weeks, typically running from early-to-mid March to the beginning of November in states that observe it.
The clocks were last changed Nov. 3 at the end of daylight saving in 2024, "falling back" an hour.
For 2025, clocks will "fall back" again on the first Sunday in November when daylight savings ends.
Why was daylight saving time created?
Daylight savings time was first instated in the U.S. more than a century ago, though some people credit its invention to an essay written by Benjamin Franklin in 1784.
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In an essay about saving candles, Franklin wrote "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." But that was meant more as satire than a serious consideration.
Germany was the first to adopt daylight saving time on May 1, 1916, during World War I as a way to conserve fuel. The rest of Europe followed soon after.
Two years later, the U.S. adopted daylight saving time in March of 1918, with the intention of adding additional daylight hours also as a way to help save energy costs during World War I, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. However, it was unpopular and abolished after World War I.
On Feb. 9, 1942, Franklin Roosevelt instituted a year-round daylight saving time, which he called "wartime." The law, was again meant to instate daylight saving time to "help conserve fuel and promote national security defense," the department said. This lasted until Sept. 30, 1945.
Daylight saving time didn't become standard in the U.S. until the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which mandated standard time across the country within established time zones. It stated that clocks would advance one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in April and turn back one hour at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in October.
The standard schedule for daylight saving changed in 2005, thanks in part to the prevalence of trick-or-treating on Halloween.
Under the conditions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November – a change put in place in part to allow children to trick-or-treat in more daylight.
Which states don't observe daylight saving time?
Nearly every U.S. state observes daylight saving time, with the exceptions of Arizona (although some Native American tribes do observe DST in their territories) and Hawaii. U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, do not observe daylight saving time.
Will President Trump end daylight saving time?
In a December 2024 post on TruthSocial, President Donald Trump, who was president-elect at the time, wrote, "The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation."
While President Trump's position seemed to garner an endorsement from advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the president-elect's son, Donald Trump Jr., appeared to back the opposite position.
The younger Trump's position is consistent with a bill the Senate passed in 2022 that would have made daylight savings time permanent beginning the following year.
Some federal lawmakers have spearheaded efforts to end the time change altogether, saying such a move provides health benefits, gives the economy a boost and allows Americans to enjoy sunlight during their most productive hours.
In 2022, the U.S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act, ending the twice-yearly clock change and making daylight saving time a year-round standard. However, the bill wasn't considered by House lawmakers, who prioritized other legislation instead.
Almost all states have considered legislation to stay on standard or daylight saving time, and 20 states have passed bills or resolutions to implement year-round daylight saving time in the last several years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But, because federal law currently does not allow for year-round daylight saving time, the states would have to wait for Congress to pass the bill in order to make the switch.
How would eliminating DST impact the Chicago area?
During standard time, people in the central time zone in the U.S. are aligned perfectly with solar time, but during daylight saving time, they are pushed further away from that clock.
As daylight saving time is observed in Illinois from March to November, sunsets will get as late as 8:29 p.m. under daylight saving time on June 20, which comes with a 5:15 a.m. sunrise, according to timeanddate.com.
If Chicago and the rest of Illinois continued to observe standard time after the early March switch, both the sunrise and sunset times at the peak of summer would be an hour earlier, with a 4:15 a.m. sunrise and 7:29 p.m. sunset.
Maintaining standard time would mean earlier sunsets overall, which would include a 6:03 p.m. sunset on March 20, as opposed to a 7:03 p.m. sunset that Chicago will see on that date next year under the observance of daylight saving time.
