Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
The United States is the only rich, democratic country in the world that does not guarantee workers the right to paid vacation. As a result, 23 percent of the US civilian workforce — or about 33 million workers — lack any paid vacation, and the amount that employers provide voluntarily — an average of 10 days per year — falls well below even the legal minimum required in almost all comparable world economies.1
Figure 1 summarizes the most recent available data on the legally required minimum annual vacation days across the rich, democratic countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).2 Twenty-five of the countries require employers to provide at least 20 paid vacation days per year. Four of these set the minimum at 25. The minimum in the United Kingdom is 28 days per year. The legal minimum in the remaining five countries in the figure is somewhat lower: Korea (15), Mexico (12), Israel (12), Japan (10), and Canada (10).3
However, uniquely among OECD countries, the legal minimum in the United States is zero. In the absence of a legal requirement, private-sector employers, on average, provide only 10 days of paid vacation per year.
The legally required minimum days of paid vacation in the countries in Figure 1 apply to all workers — regardless of part-time or full-time status, pay level, or employer-size. By contrast, access to voluntarily provided paid vacation in the United States is highly unequal (Figure 2). Low-wage workers are far less likely than higher wage workers to have employer-provided vacation. More than half (57 percent) of the lowest-paid 10 percent of workers have no paid vacation. For workers in the bottom quarter of earnings, 43 percent have zero paid vacation days. Even at higher wages, the share without paid vacation is not small. Fifteen percent of workers in the top 10 percent have no employer-provided paid vacation. Part-time workers and workers in small firms are also far less likely than full-time workers or workers in larger firms to have employer-provided paid vacation.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Hayley Brown, Peter Hart, Brandon Novick, and Virginia Rutter for many helpful comments, and to authors of earlier editions of this series of “No-Vacation Nation” reports: Rebecca Ray, Milla Sanes, and Adewale Maye.
This first appeared on CEPR.
