Library Volunteer Statistics (2026): Formal Volunteering, Hour Value, Staffing Pressure & Screening Gaps

Libraries run on volunteers: friends groups, reading buddies, summer-program helpers, and tax-prep assistants. This report pulls together the most credible national figures we could verify on formal volunteering, the economic value of volunteer time, library usage and staffing, and how often volunteers are actually screened. It is part of our statistics hub, and it is written for library directors, friends-group boards, and church or community leaders who host library-adjacent programs.

Key takeaways

How many Americans volunteer through organizations

Formal volunteering, meaning helping through an organization, is recovering. AmeriCorps and the Census Bureau report that more than 28 percent of Americans, or more than 75.7 million people, formally volunteered between September 2022 and 2023, and those volunteers contributed an estimated 4.99 billion hours. The rate was 30 percent in 2019 and fell to 23.2 percent in 2021 during the pandemic, the largest drop since tracking began in 2002. The 2023 estimate of 28.3 percent sits well above the 2021 low.

The rebound is uneven. AmeriCorps reported that Utah led all states with a 46.6 percent formal volunteering rate in 2023, and that people ages 16 to 17 had the highest formal volunteering rate of any age group, at 34.1 percent. For library leaders, the youth figure matters: teen volunteers are a major share of summer reading and homework-help labor.

What volunteer hours are worth

Independent Sector and the Do Good Institute estimate that a volunteer hour was worth $36.14 in 2025, a 3.9 percent increase from 2024, and the publisher flags that 2025 figure as preliminary. The method uses average private-sector earnings from Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and the estimate is explicitly described as a replacement-cost figure, not a price for every role. State values vary widely: $17.99 in Puerto Rico to $54.77 in the District of Columbia. Use the state rate for grant reports, not the national average, when your library is in a high- or low-wage state.

At national scale, the AmeriCorps 2023 volunteers' 4.99 billion hours carried an estimated economic value of $167.2 billion. Apply the same logic to your own sign-in sheets: hours times your state rate is the number funders and boards understand. Our volunteer engagement benchmark explains how to pair hour value with participation and retention measures.

Libraries as volunteer-supported institutions

Public libraries are large, active institutions. The Urban Libraries Council's 2025 report covered a record 122 participating library systems across the U.S. and Canada, representing 2,307 locations and serving more than 91 million people, and visits rose nearly 10 percent from 2023 to 2024. The Institute of Museum and Library Services' Public Libraries Survey has tracked staffing for years; its FY 2019 results recorded 143,883 full-time-equivalent library staff, who answered 220 million reference questions. Volunteers supplement that paid workforce, but the federal series does not give us a clean national volunteer headcount, which is why we flag it as a gap.

Academic libraries show a similar picture of thin professional staffing. The 2025 ACRL survey found that librarians made up 33.9 percent of total library full-time-equivalent staff, down from 35 percent in 2024, and that almost a third of reference interactions now happen virtually.

Engagement signals: a comparison point from England

The UK's Community and Engagement Survey offers a useful benchmark for how many adults use libraries at all. It found that 36 percent of people aged 16 and over in England engaged with libraries at least once in the last 12 months, a 5-point rise from the prior year. Physical engagement was 31 percent, and digital engagement was 18 percent. Those are England figures, not U.S. ones, so treat them as context for building local participation goals.

Screening gaps: who checks volunteers, and how

Libraries serve children, teens, and older adults, so screening is not optional. The most-cited nonprofit benchmark is a 2018 Sterling Volunteers survey of 967 respondents. It found that just under half (47.17 percent) of responding organizations check every volunteer before onboarding, while 18 percent do not conduct background checks. That is dated, but the pattern has been repeated in later work. A Church Mutual survey found that 52 percent of people who regularly attend or frequent an organization that uses volunteers expect those volunteers to have criminal background checks, yet only 33 percent of volunteers said they had one.

Scope of checks matters as much as whether checks happen. In the Sterling survey, 92 percent ran criminal record checks, 73 percent ran sex offender searches, and 41 percent used identity verification. Identity verification is the piece most libraries can add cheaply, and it is the basis of our identity verification feature.

Gaps are also visible in the nonprofit risk data. A Nonprofit Risk Management Center survey found that 65 percent of nonprofits would bar a volunteer with an accused child-abuse record, but only 42 percent checked child protective services records. For a deeper walkthrough of screening options, see how to screen volunteers safely and fairly and our volunteer risk management guide.

Staffing pressure and recruitment needs

Library professionals are stretched, which pushes more routine work onto volunteers and onto the staff who manage them. Ithaka S+R's 2025 U.S. library survey found that 17 percent of respondents reported difficulty hiring technical services staff, and that frontline services positions were among the roles where hiring and reductions were both anticipated. The same survey reported that 44 percent of library leaders had never looked for another job in the past year.

What this means for your volunteer program

The numbers point one way: volunteering is rebounding, its hours carry real economic value, and many organizations still screen inconsistently. A library that recruits teens, retirees, and