Country Vacations & Resorts

Once per vacation season, articles appear in the media about standard and statutory minimums for days off work.

Some countries call this “leave,” and some call it a “holiday.” In some countries a national holiday is a paid day off – separate from “vacation days.” In other countries, national holidays are part of the paid package. One way or another, it appears many Americans are still calling it “not enough” and based on the numbers, some US workers do have an opportunity to complain. But that’s about all they can do.

US law does not require employers to grant any vacation or holidays and about 25% of all employees receive no vacation time or holidays.

For those employees that do receive vacation, US standard is 10 days paid vacation and 8 days paid national holidays. US military personnel receive 30 days paid leave plus the national holidays for a total of 38 days paid vacation per year. Some employers also have “use it or lose it” policies that keep employees from “banking” leave. Others do not – and in fact at one quasi-government agency I worked for, many of the more senior employees were known to have 10 or 12 or more weeks paid leave on the books. Lucky them…

Here are a few countries with fairly generous employee vacation packages. They are not necessarily the countries with the highest days vacation allowed, but the countries that might actually also have employment to offer.

Australia
20 days paid vacation (10 days that can be sold back to the employer)
10 public holidays

Belgium
20 days

Brazil
30 consecutive days after one year’s employment. (10 can be sold back to the employer)

Denmark
25 work days

Iceland
24 days vacation
13 public holidays

Ireland
20 work days
9 public holidays

Italy
20-32 days holiday (dependent on job, etc.)
12-13 public holidays

New Zealand
4 weeks
11 public holidays

Russia
28 calendar days

Spain
30 calendar days

UK
28 work days
8 public holidays

I guess the opposing point of view is if you even have a job – don’t complain. I’ve heard employers use this veiled threat to keep employees from questioning what appears to be “standard procedure.” Maybe a better question to ask is why the US has NO standard law on that all important work-life balance days off number? And who decided 10 days as a semi-standard, is enough?

Remembering that the number of paid vacation days is basically granted by employers, I’m quite frankly surprised anyone working in the US gets any of them. Supposedly there to address the “work-life” balance, it more often appears you have to fight for the days you are expecting – no matter the number.

If you’ve worked in Information Technology as I have, you may have been contract versus employee – meaning days not worked are always days without pay – and you may have also found that some big software rollout runs into your preferred vacation time. Less users on a commercial online software system on the 4th of July may mean this is primetime for your employer to want your entire IT team rolling out a new package.

It might be time for the US to rethink this vacation days number, but I doubt they will. They haven’t understood that working longer does not necessarily mean working better or at a higher level of productivity.

Source
Further info by country