This document provides key statistics about youth volunteering in Australia and was released in August 2023 in honour of National Student Volunteer Week.
The data presented here is taken from several sources, specifically Volunteering in Australia research undertaken in 2022 to inform the development of the National Strategy for Volunteering, the General Social Survey (GSS) 2019 and 2020, the Household Impacts of COVID-19 surveys (the February, March, April, and June waves).
Key findings
- 25.0 per cent of people aged 18-24 years volunteered formally (through an organisation or group) in 2022. This is an estimated 572,635 volunteers aged 18-24.3
- The proportion of people aged 18-24 years who had volunteered formally in the previous 12 months fell from 36.5 per cent in late 2019 to 25.6 per cent in April 2021. This decreased slightly to 25.0 per cent in 2022.
- Volunteers aged 15-24 are more likely than those in other age groups to volunteer for fewer hours. However, the proportion of young volunteers who volunteer for 100 hours or more increased significantly between 2019 and 2020.
- Volunteers aged 18-29 years are more likely than average to volunteer for particular types of organisations, accounting for 37.8 per cent of volunteers in Animal Welfare organisations and 28.8 per cent of volunteers in Health organisations. They are less likely to volunteer forAged Care (7.5 per cent of volunteers in this sector), Arts / Heritage (9.9 per cent), Environment (12.4 per cent), and Sport / Recreation (11.3 per cent) organisations.
- Younger people are relatively more likely to volunteer in the field or over the internet, whereas older people are more likely to volunteer in person at the organisation.
- Formal volunteering among young people increased gradually between 2006 to 2016, but decreased significantly between 2016 and 2021, which includes the impact of COVID-19. Between April 2021 and April 2022, people aged 18-24 were the only age group for which the rate of formal volunteering did not increase.
