Yesterday, while I was taking a work break, I came across an article entitled “Most Americans Use Just Half Their Vacation Days.”
The article reported that:
* American employees use only 51 percent of their eligible paid vacation time and paid time off.
* Sixty-one percent of Americans work while they’re on “vacation.”
* About 25 percent of American employees are contacted by a work colleague about a work-related matter while on “vacation.”
* About 20 percent of American employees are contacted by their boss while on “vacation.”
This news report made me curious about how often non-Americans take vacations so I researched the issue. I was NOT surprised.
Americans take fewer vacations than people from virtually all of the other 38 nations surveyed by Mercer, a human resources consulting firm. When paid public holidays are figured into the analysis, only the people of China have fewer paid days off than Americans.
The chart in the “Which countries have the most vacation days?” article reflects “the minimum vacation days for an employee who works five days a week and has 10 years of service with a company,” according to the article.
The chart shows that the people of Brazil, Finland and France who meet the above criteria get 30 paid vacation days off per year and the people of the United Kingdom, Lithuania and Russia get 28 paid vacation days off annually. Other nations where the average vacation days off is at least 25 days annually are Austria, Greece, Poland, Sweden, Luxembourg, Norway and Denmark.
Americans who meet the above criteria get 15 paid vacation days annually. And those are the lucky ones. “Full-time American workers get an average of 8.1 paid vacation days after their first year on the job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” this article reports.
Unfortunately, the American system is NOT working.
|