Here in the US the typical company will give a new employee 2 weeks of vacation. After a few years you can earn more vacation (3 weeks after 5 years, etc.) with some kind of cap around 4 weeks after you’ve been there 20. You can lump in federal and corporate holidays to get another week with the range somewhere between 3-5 weeks. If you’re REALLY lucky, that doesn’t include your sick days (a lot of companies group sick days in vacation to call them “Paid Time Off” and make them sound bigger). If you’re really unlucky then you don’t even get weekends off so your vacation goes into the negative.
Considering that a year has 52 weeks, that means an American worker is working over 93% of the time. That’s a lot. In other developed countries the vacation policies are very different. This is a great chart from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development (JPC-SED):
| COUNTRY | AVERAGE HOURS WORKED PER YEAR | AVERAGE ANNUAL VACATION DAYS |
| United States | 1,966 | 10.2 |
| Japan | 1,889 | 17.5 |
| United Kingdom | 1,731 | 25 |
| France | 1,656 | 25-30 |
Courtesy gaebler.com
If you work in the US your first reaction should be “What the hell?” US workers work more hours and have radically less vacation than other developed countries.
Before you start arguing about how this is the engine of the US economy and how the US GDP is so enormous in comparison (yes, China isn’t on that list) I think it’s important to consider that there are more things than money. Yes, the US is still the largest economy (for now – hi China!) but the US is not the healthiest. The WHO tells us that the healthy life expectancy in the US is between 67-71 while Japan is 72-78. The UK is 69-72. France is 69-75. US workers work harder with less time off and LIVE SHORTER LIVES.
It’s also important to consider the shift from the industrial to the information economy. As more and more jobs in the US require thinking and creativity, the line between hours worked and actual productivity blurs. A worker in a high-tech field that is well rested is much more productive than the same worker with only a few hours sleep. Additionally, burn-out becomes the biggest problem with thought-intensive jobs as the creativity and analytics skills required to do them effectively diminish over time without some variety.
This is all a long way of asking why it is employers in the US short change their workers. Why is the slight cost in productivity for granting more vacation not worth the health and productivity of their employees? Why is it that we work ourselves so hard and don’t demand more time off to enjoy the fruits of our labors?
I don’t blame the employers. Everyone is an employee and everyone has the freedom to work where ever they want. Why is it that workers don’t demand more time off? Why is the market not forced to provide more vacation by the very workers they need to function?
I have no idea but things might be changing. I’m encouraged by Netflix’s policy of no limits on vacation – it’s just the honor system. Get your work done and you can vacation as much as you’d like. Considering how the Netflix stock is doing, it doesn’t seem to have hurt their productivity.
Sounds like a place I’d like to work.
