The No-Vacation Nation
Why do we hate time off? | 4-min read
Hello from home (D.C.), where I’ve just returned from a ten-day trip visiting my 94-year-old abuela and a townful of cousins in Puerto Rico. While I was there, I counted that it had been five years since I’d last visited. In truth, I hadn’t been to many places for pleasure in those five years, despite having a job with an “unlimited vacation” policy. Of course, that got me thinking about vacations and sent me tumbling down a rabbit hole where I landed and stubbed all ten toes on a shocking fact.
The U.S. is the only “developed” country in the world without a national vacation policy. In contrast to our colleagues in Europe, Australia, and much of Asia, workers in the U.S. enjoy exactly no government-guaranteed time off, leaving vacation allowances at the complete discretion of our sometimes-generous (oftentimes-not) employers.
To put this in perspective, 20 other OECD nations (a group The Economist delightfully dubs “a club of mostly rich countries”) have minimum national standards for paid vacation and holidays. Whip out your tissues and look at the chart below.
A few more fun facts:
The European Union (E.U.) mandates a minimum of 4 weeks vacation (20 days) across its member countries, many of which grant much more.
Five E.U. countries provide “premium pay” for vacations, including an extra month’s salary in Austria and Greece
Two provide paid leave for acts of “civic duty” (including moving house in Spain and community service in France).
Several countries don’t allow employers to trade unused vacation days for payment, effectively ensuring that workers actually do take time off.
In the rest of the developed working world, vacation appears to be a fundamental right.
In the U.S., however, vacation seems to be a privilege for the privileged.
Some opposite-of-fun facts:
Nearly one-quarter of Americans currently work without any paid vacation and 22% without paid holiday.
Unsurprisingly, our decentralized approach to leave has also resulted in highly unequal access to time off: 90% of full-time workers have paid time off vs. 40% of part-time workers
The disparity is even more striking among income levels: 91% of top earners have paid time off, while only 50% of the bottom quartile have any paid vacation at all
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Adding to our limited and unequal vacation access, we’re also downright bad at taking them. One study conducted in 2018 found that 55% of Americans hadn’t used up their allotted vacation that year – an avoidance that amounted to 768 million unused vacation days. Even more telling, employees with access to unlimited vacation policies end up taking fewer days off than those with a set amount of paid leave. I wasn’t alone.
And even when we do take time off, we don’t really. In a recent survey, 60% of Americans admitted to doing some work during their vacation, and 12% reported “working as normal.” At my last organization, I remember one executive mentor advising me that, above a certain level, it is poorly viewed to put an out-of-office auto-reply on at all.
Unpacking our relationship with vacation
Why are we so bad at taking time off?
One reason is economics. On average, when Americans are asked to choose between time off and more money, we take the money. As one labor economist explained,
“…we don’t have the public sector paying for health care, transportation, education, and housing like many European countries do... so there’s true economic need for money to come first in America, and time second.”
Another reason is our culture’s obsession with productivity, which exalts the hustle and discredits rest as a sin of the lazy and immoral. Despite the mounting evidence that time away from work can actually lengthen our life span and improve productivity, we feel guilty asking for time off and fear we’ll be labeled as idle and uncommitted.
As much as we complain about burnout and pine for days off, we often subconsciously reinforce the very attitudes that keep us at work. Every time we roll our eyes at out-of-office replies, refuse to take time off or, perhaps worse, work when we shouldn’t, we’re contributing to the foundations of the no-vacation nation.
How to take time off
There is clearly room (and ample precedent) for policy at multiple levels to secure a minimum standard for paid time off – a move that would help us convert breaks from a privilege of the privileged to a basic right for all.
But part of the solution also lies with us; it comes from claiming our time out of “the office,” acknowledging its benefits, recognizing it as both essential and enriching. Whether that means sipping cocktails on a beach, exploring a far-off land, or sitting at home two feet from the [shut-down] laptop, protect your right to rest.
PSA: If you or someone you know has problems taking time off, check out the resources below.
for the curious…
In my ongoing quest to understand our obsession with productivity and aversion to time off, I have added two new books to my docket: How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy and Do nothing: how to break away from overworking, overdoing, and underliving. I’ll be sharing pearls of wisdom with you here and on my Instagram.
We All Really Need a Vacation. Here’s How to Make the Most of It.
Harvard Business Review | 5-min read
Dear Americans, when was the last time you took a real vacation?
The Guardian | 5-min read
Why the U.S. is one of only a few countries with no paid time off
Vox | 10-min read
