January 24, 2008 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Volunteering in 2007

About 60.8 million people volunteered through or for an organization at least once between September 2006 and September 2007. The proportion who volunteered was 26.2 percent of the civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and over.

[Chart data—TXT]

In the year ending in September 2007, both the number of volunteers and the volunteer rate declined from the previous year. The 0.5-percentage point decrease in the volunteer rate follows a decline of 2.1 percent in the prior year. The volunteer rate had held constant at 28.8 percent from 2003 through 2005, after rising slightly from its 2002 level of 27.4 percent.

These data are from a supplement to the September 2007 Current Population Survey. Find out more in "Volunteering in the United States, 2007," news release 08-0090.