Helping Seniors

Do you have any personal stories that have led you to want to help seniors in the community? Are there any ideas or experience you would like to share with other volunteers?

Here are few statistics about volunteers and how they help others throughout the world:

About 60.8 million people volunteered through or for an organization atleast once between September 2006 and September 2007, the Bureau of LaborStatistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. The proportionof the population who volunteered was 26.2 percent. This 0.5 percentagepoint decrease in the volunteer rate follows a decline of 2.1 percentagepoints 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 of27.4 percent. These data on volunteering were collected through a supplement to theSeptember 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS).

The supplement was spon-sored by the Corporation for National and Community Service. The CPS is amonthly survey of about 60,000 households that obtains information onemployment and unemployment among the nation's civilian noninstitutionalpopulation age 16 and over. Volunteers are defined as persons who didunpaid work (except for expenses) through or for an organization. Formore information about the volunteer supplement, see the Technical Note.Volunteering Among Demographic Groups In the year ending September 2007, both the number of volunteers and thevolunteer rate declined from the previous year. About 29.3 percent of womendid volunteer work during the year, down from 30.1 percent during the prioryear. The volunteer rate for men was about unchanged at 22.9 percent.

As in previous years, women volunteered at a higher rate than men across allage groups, educational levels, and other major characteristics. (See tablesA and 1.) By age, persons age 35 to 54 continued to be the most likely to volunteer(30.3 percent), while persons in their early twenties were the least likely(17.7 percent).

The volunteer rate for teens showed the largest decline inthe year ending in September 2007; the rate for females age 16 to 19 fellfrom 28.8 to 26.6 percent and the volunteer rate for males of that age fellfrom 24.1 to 22.5 percent.