No More 10 Minute Breaks: Americans’ Slipping Volunteer Spirit

: Volunteers fill bags with food for a customer at the Interfaith Food Pantry at Emmanuel Baptist Church on Wednesday in Albany, N.Y. New Labor Department data shows lagging volunteer rates among Americans.; MIKE GROLL/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Americans may not be quite the volunteers we’d like to think.

The U.S. volunteer rate—volunteers as a percent of the population—has been sliding for nearly a decade, according to Labor Department data released Thursday.

Some 24.9% of all Americans offered at least a small bit of their time to a church, youth or other organization last year. The figure is a little below 2014′s 25.3% and well below the peak of 28.8% in 2005. (Labor Department records on volunteering date back to 2002.)

And it’s not just one band of the population.

Folks who can’t find a job don’t seem to be filling their time by volunteering. The volunteer rate for the unemployed fell to 23.3% from a peak of 26.7% in 2003. For those not in the labor force, the rate was 21.4% in 2015 versus 24.7% in 2004.

By comparison, the rate for those with a full- or part-time job slipped to 27.2% from 31.3% in 2005.

The only demographic group that saw a small uptick was Hispanics and Latinos, with a rate of 15.5% for the past three years compared with a previous peak of 15.4% in 2005.

Other factoids from the report:

By age, 35- to 44-year-olds were the most likely to volunteer.
Married people volunteer at a higher rate than unmarried.
Women volunteer at a higher rate than men.
Parents with children under age 18 were more likely to volunteer than people without children.
People with higher levels of education were more likely to volunteer than were those with less education.
Volunteers spent a median of 52 hours on volunteer activities.
Collecting, preparing, distributing or serving food was the activity volunteers performed most often in 2015.