We’re well into summer vacation season, which means many Americans are likely traveling, whether it’s to their favorite beach, mountain destination or other locale.
But unlike people in most other countries, Americans aren’t guaranteed vacation days. If you can take time off, it’s at your employer’s discretion. In much of the rest of the world, workers receive a mandated number of vacation days — often at least four and sometimes up to six weeks.
The same holds true for public holidays: While there are 11 U.S. federal holidays on the calendar, there’s no law that says private employers must give their workers those days off.
As Eileen Applebaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, once put it: “In the U.S., paid vacation and holiday benefits are based on luck in the boss lottery, not federal policy.”
So what countries are on top when it comes to vacation time? In a 2019 report, the CEPR found that France led the way with 30 mandated vacation days — and that figure has held study since then, according to a French government website.
Other countries, especially European ones, are not far behind, according to the CEPR. Workers in the U.K. have 28 mandated vacation days, while in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Spain and Sweden, they have 25 days.
If you look at both vacation days and public holidays, Iran leads the way with a remarkable 53 days off, according to the Visual Capitalist website. Other countries ranking high in the combined vacation/holiday rankings include San Marino at 46 days and Yemen at 45 days.
The lack of mandated vacation time in U.S. has been noted by many political, economic and other commentators.
In a 2022 column for the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote that while this policy (or lack thereof) seemingly speaks to how the U.S. economy is able to thrive because of our workaholic culture, it doesn’t necessarily mean our workers are more productive. The need for time off can’t be overlooked in terms of employee morale, Krugman argued.
“Governments [that mandate paid vacation time] may be doing everyone a favor by preventing them from working too much,” Krugman wrote.
Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, isn’t the only person to make this point. Younger people coming into the workforce are also raising the question.
In a recent column for the Brown University student newspaper, Megan Slusarewicz said she found it shocking how little vacation time was offered at the entry-level jobs she looked at as she neared graduation — generally, two weeks at best.
It as “though they were designed with the explicit purpose of exploiting the spry youthfulness and optimism of recent graduates by monopolizing their time,” Slusarewicz observed. “How was I supposed to relax, visit my loved ones and keep up with my passions within the measly timeframe of half a month? It would not have been possible.”
Slusarewicz argued that “legislation must be put in place to hold businesses accountable.”
But is such legislation likely to be passed? Shawn Fremstad, CEPR’s director of law and political economy, told MarketWatch that the recent focus of federal and state legislatures has been on passing measures offering paid family and medical leave — not vacation time. Indeed, President Joe Biden has made providing family and medical leave part of his administration’s mandate.
But Fremstad said he could see the discussion eventually going beyond that to address vacation time.
“I think this is the next step,” Fremstad said. “I would love to see somebody like Joe Biden say, ‘We want every working person to have vacation days.’”
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