Countries Vacation Time

Who gets the most (and least) vacation

When it comes to taking a holiday, it's best to be Finnish, and (not quite) the worst to be American. A new study ranks countries by their paid time-off policies.


...No surprises here.

I just finished my second year here, so I've gone from 10 days vacation a year to -- wait for it -- 12! Man was that worth sticking around for. I'm not going to take any more vacation days, though, so that's just money in the bank when I'm done.

What a shame. It doesn't help that the article states that most Americans don't take the time off that they have...

At my office, I kid you not, people go from radiation treatments back to work!!

I only have 15 days vacation, they have say 25, and they never use it...I'll be pulling my hair out, wishing I was outside and my coworkers wont even go out to get lunch...It is the strangest thing. Its not like there is a pressing work issue to be dealt with either. I stay close and work long hours when needed, but not a day goes by that I don't plan my next vacation.

Heh, I like how they use the much higher Mercer "estimate" of 15 days/10 holidays in the chart. "Typical practice"? WTF does that mean? And what about the 25% who don't get anything at all? And why compare the "typical practice" in the US for workers with 10 years experience with the bare minimum numbers elsewhere?

The CEPR numbers (9 days/6 holidays) seems much more grounded in reality. And it's an actual study. Using those numbers, the US is dead last.

And using the rest of the study's methodology (actual days off required by law) we are also dead last: A big fat zero (based on federal law at least).

OK, rant off ... I know I'm probably preaching to the choir.

ugh. i'm still having trouble getting used to planning vacations in eight hour increments.

I worked for five years to go from 10 days off to 15 days off.. At that point, I had to work another 10 years to get another day off...

The company policy changed though, and people come in with what I worked 5 years for. I'm not complaining, however, since if I stick with it, I have two more years to get to 20 days...

It's all a bit of a joke, though, to imagine really traveling with this amount of paid vacation time. Sure, if I never took any other time off the rest of the year... that's unlikely...

A friend of mine works as a Vet tech and gets no time off for her first year but could manage 3 days off in a row somehow. Then she gets 5 days vacation after the first year. MY dad works for a semiconductor company and gets 3 weeks vacation but like the typical american, hasn't really been anywhere for a strech of time in many many years and usually takes 3 or 4 day weekends on occasion to either do work around the house or go see a car show in CA. Poor guy, I've been trying to get him and my mom to go to Europe one of these days.

So here's a question - the number of annual vacation days is well discussed, but how does carrying vacation over to the next year work for all of you? Is it "use it or lose it?"

Here, even though there is a legal minimum (10 days) it seems that what happens after that is largely up to the company. For instance, I get 3 weeks a year, and can carry forward up to a full year's worth into the next year. So, theoretically, since I have no vacation plans this year, I could take 6 weeks off next year - enough for a very good trip, except that Kathy could only take 2 weeks. If, however, I only take 2 weeks vacation next year, essentially a week of accrued vacation would just disapear.

At my last employer, any vacation pay remaining at the end of the year was paid out in cash. And some friends simply lose any unused vacation time at the end of each year.

Are there any consistent rules where you are?

I believe in many states in the US, the policy is dependent on the company. Lots seem to be "use it or lose it."

In California, however, they cannot take away vacation time once it has been accrued. They can make you stop accruing it once you have maxed out (that amount depends on the employer), but they can't take it away once it's been given.

For me, I can carry over 3 weeks, but I won't start accruing again until I have used some of those days.

A few years back, I was at a company that was trying to make people take their time off so they could get it off the books. It was an NY-based company, so for other employees, it was "use or lose." But for those of us in CA, it was like, "pretty please, we would really like you to use your vacation." Kind of funny.

Also, SF is pretty progressive with other time off. A new law was just enacted that forces companies to pay for sick leave. A full time employee must get at least 9 days.

My company is pretty much use or lose.

By the books, you can take three days forward, but they must be used in the first quarter.

In reality, I took 5 forward last year, but I think my boss was lenient about it because I literally used them the first week of the new year...

Not paid for time off accrued but not used unless you're leaving the company...

At my last job I started with 15 days vacation - and we were able to carry over 10 of those to the next year. All wonderful, yes. (small perks for the hell that was my job)

But even if you had 5 weeks worth of vacation time saved up - you were very rarely allowed to take more than one week off at a time. So forget that month long trip to Chile...not gonna happen.

Reading that article seriously makes me want to move to Europe... if only it were easy to find a job there.. [sigh].

My first "real" job out of college, I got zero vacation days for my first year, then convinced them to let me use some personal days for vacation (they were NOT happy with that). Finally, I quit and had to go backpacking through Asia for a few months before I was ready to work again.

Now I have 2 weeks and it kills me. I think 4 would be really, really nice... I'm jealous of everyone who has more time than I!

I found that the "use or lose" policy can actually be good. My old company used to let people accrue as much time as they wanted, but then some of the workaholics there never took vacations and ended up with like 6 months of vacation days accrued. Now you have to use all of your time each year and it forces people to take time off.

The real problem for me was always that if I took a week off, I fell hopelessly behind on all of my work and actually felt more stressed out when I came back then before I left.

Also, am I reading this wrong or does that California law seem absolutely idiotic? If companies can't take away accrued time off but can limit the maximum, what's stopping them from setting the maximum to, say, 2 weeks, which would completely defeat the purpose of the law?

Use or lose in principle is sound, but in theory, it still depends on the corporate culture.

I know people at my company every year who get to the end and have unused time that they never got to use...

If there's one thing I love about my job it's the vacation time. 14.4hrs per month...or about 21 days a year. I try and take a three day weekend monthly, and then once a year leave for a couple of weeks.