This article reviews labor as the socio-philosophical category. Despite certain episodes in history of the antique and medieval philosophical thought, the socio-philosophical understanding of labor as a special phenomenon that characterizes personal and collective life begins in the second half of the XVIII century and gains relevance by the XIX and XX centuries. From this stage up to the present day can be outlined the two main themes of social philosophy directly associated with the concept of labor: the theme of freedom and the theme of justice. Methodologically, both of them are cross-disciplinary from the perspective of editorial classification and categorization of philosophical knowledge: the topic of freedom is developed within the subject-conceptual framework of philosophical anthropology, while the topic of justice also belongs to the sphere of ethical thought. The scientific novelty consists in the analysis of labor through the prism of a philosophical reference to the concepts of freedom and justice. In the context of humanistic discourse, these categories are reflected in the philosophy of culture, political philosophy, philosophy of economics, and philosophy of law, which allows viewing the phenomenon of labor not only in social, but also in anthropological, political, legal, cultural and other contexts. Having examined the ontological questions of labor, the author concludes that the philosophy of labor aims to resolve such key questions as the concept of labor, its purpose for the individual and the society, cultural and ethical principles of labor, and correlation between the concepts labor and freedom.