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Americans Are Volunteering Less Than Ever
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Americans Are Volunteering Less Than Ever
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a popular day for volunteering. But service work overall has hit a record low.
Every year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Americans are encouraged to volunteer to honor the legacy of the late civil rights leader. The federal holiday was officially dedicated to volunteerism in 1994 under the King Holiday and Service Act in a bid to motivate the public to do good in their communities.
While the holiday is a popular time for civic service, the volunteering rate across the US is at record lows, following a steady decline since at least the 2010’s.
The latest official data on community service, released last year by AmeriCorps through the Census Bureau, revealed a particularly steep decline during the pandemic. Less than a quarter of Americans age 16 and older said they formally volunteered through an organization between September 2020 to September 2021, down from 30% in 2019 and the lowest rate recorded since the organization began the survey in 2002. The decline is prevalent across various states and demographic groups, according to the data.
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“During the pandemic, volunteer rates declined by a tremendous amount, and now the data shows that volunteering rates are lower than they have ever been,” says Nathan Dietz, research director of the Do Good Institute at the University of Maryland. “That’s a bigger and much more substantial change than we ever saw during the 2010’s when we saw gradual declines, and the question is how the sector is gonna be able to recover from that.”