December 19, 2003 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Increase in volunteering

Both the number of volunteers and the volunteer rate rose over the year ended in September 2003.

Volunteer rates, September 2002 and 2003 (percent)
[Chart data—TXT]

About 63.8 million people did volunteer work at some point from September 2002 to September 2003, up from 59.8 million for the similar period ended in September 2002. The volunteer rate grew to 28.8 percent, up from 27.4 percent.

About 25.1 percent of men and 32.2 percent of women did volunteer work in the year ended in September 2003, increases of 1.5 and 1.2 percentage points from 2002, respectively. For teenagers, the volunteer rate jumped by 2.6 percentage points to 29.5 percent.

These data are from a supplement to the September 2003 Current Population Survey. Find out more in "Volunteering in the United States, 2003" (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 03-888.

Happy 10th Birthday, TED!

The very first issue of The Editor's Desk (TED) was posted on September 28, 1998. TED was the first online-only publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For 10 years, BLS has been committed to posting a new TED article each business day, for a total of over 2,400 articles so far.

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