2007 Volunteering in the United States — 2008-01-23

(NOTE: This release was reissued on Friday, February 8, 2008, to acknowl- edge the Corporation for National and Community Service in the second para- graph as the sponsor of the supplement. No other changes were made to the news release.) About 60.8 million people volunteered through or for an organization at least once between September 2006 and September 2007, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. The proportion of the population who volunteered was 26.2 percent. This 0.5 percentage point decrease in the volunteer rate follows a decline of 2.1 percentage points in the prior year. The volunteer rate had held constant at 28.8 per- cent from 2003 through 2005, after rising slightly from its 2002 level of 27.4 percent. These data on volunteering were collected through a supplement to the September 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS). The supplement was spon- sored by the Corporation for National and Community Service.