A Dutch executive chides Americans for not taking more vacation
Courtesy of Sander van 't Noordende
- Americans take much less vacation time than much of the rest of the world.
- Randstad NV CEO
While some European companies are trying out a four-day work week to give employees more time off, many US workers struggle to even use all of the few vacation days they have.
Americans' hesitancy — or inability — to take significant time off is something Sander van 't Noordende, CEO of the employment services provider Randstad NV, noticed when he first moved to the US from the Netherlands, he said Thursday at a World Economic Forum panel in Davos.
"When I moved to the US, people said, 'On Wednesday we're going on vacation.' I said 'okay that sounds great, when will you be back?' 'Yea, next Monday.'"
His fellow panelist, UNI Global Union General Secretary Christy Hoffman, provided more context.
"The three-week vacation is almost unheard of in the United States," she said. "I've been told maybe once every couple years you can do that, but not really."
"There really isn't enough demand in the United States to have leisure time, to have time off," Hoffman said earlier on in the panel, "and it's sort of considered barbaric in other countries that you get two weeks off a year."
In 2021, only one-quarter of Americans used all their paid time off, according to a US Travel Association survey of 1,200 workers provided to Insider. The average worker had 15 vacation days but only used 11, citing COVID concerns, work-related barriers — such as being too busy or having a lack of coverage when they're gone — and the cost of travel as reasons why they left days on the table. Including paid holidays as well as vacation days, the average American took over 20 days off between 1978 and 2000, but this has fallen to roughly 17 days in recent years.
The fact that many vacation days are left unused is even more notable when one considers how few vacation days most Americans have to begin with when compared to the rest of the world.
—Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) June 23, 2022
The US is the only country in the OECD, a group of 38 of the world's most developed nations, that does not require businesses to offer any paid vacation or paid holidays. Most other countries, meanwhile, mandate between 25 to 35 paid days off.
Many US companies still choose to provide employees paid time off. It not only tends to be less than European companies, however, but 23% of American workers have zero paid vacation days, and 22% have no paid holidays, the Center of Economic and Policy Research found in 2019. For these people — many of whom are among the lowest-wage workers — choosing to not use all of their vacation days isn't even an option.
In some good news, the average American is working fewer total hours per year than they used to, but it's still more than most European countries — and seems to not have translated into more vacation time.