The Timesizing® Wire
©2000-2003 Phil Hyde, The Timesizing Wire™, Box 622, Cambridge MA 02140 USA (617) 623-8080 -  HOMEPAGE
Visit also Joe Robinson's *Work to Live campaign for a minimum of 3 weeks of vacation for all Americans.

Americans have the
shortest
vacation in the developed world

Legally mandated
   vacation days   
Sweden                          32 Portugal                   25
Denmark                      30 Netherlands             25
France                         30 Belgium                  24
Austria                        30 Icelanders aged 19?-29  24
Spain                           30 Norway              21
Ireland                       28 Switzerland        20
Icelanders aged 30-40     27 Germany         18 [30*]
Japan                     25 USA            16†

Source: Economic Policy Institute World Alamanac.  †Average; Not required by law.
*German 30-day average from "Who has the time?" by Gary Cross, 7/08/2001 Boston Globe, D8.
Iceland figures from Elin Ingvarsdottir of Icelandic Tourist Board via Jeanette Watkins of People for a Shorter Workweek 10/19/2004 email

[Note updated chart at the end of the following more recent article -]
  • Summertime summit in Seattle to dissect Americans' lack of vacation time, By Richard Seven, 8/09/2009 Seattle Times.
    Ever since the middle class began taking vacations in the mid-19th century, Americans have wrestled with questions of how much vacation is enough and how to leave work completely behind.
    Those and other issues will be batted around at this week's National Vacation Matters Summit at Seattle University.
    The agenda lists presentations on everything from the impact of workplace stress on coronary health to why Americans who get paid vacation time use relatively little of it.
    The roster of presenters includes cardiologists, psychologists and representatives of organized labor, academia and environmentalism, as well as the travel and tourism industries.
    John de Graaf, co-founder and executive director of Take Back Your Time, a Seattle nonprofit that preaches that time can and should mean more than money, organized the event.
    "The goal is to bring people together to brainstorm on how we can get Americans to better understand that vacation matters," says de Graaf, an author and freelance film producer. "I am not advocating slacking. That's not the point. We're just totally out of balance in this country."
    De Graaf recently helped draft a bill mandating paid vacations that was introduced in Congress by Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla.
    The Paid Vacation Act of 2009 would require one week of paid vacation at companies with at least 100 employees. Three years after passage, the bill would extend the one-week vacation mandate to companies with at least 50 employees, and require two weeks for companies with 100 employees. Workers must have worked 1,250 hours in a year to be eligible.
    A 2007 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that the United States is the only advanced economy in the world that doesn't guarantee its workers paid vacation. A quarter of American workers don't get any paid annual vacation; those who do average about two weeks a year.
    But the vacation issue is not just about providing vacation for everyone. It's also about getting workers to take what they've earned. A 2009 survey commissioned by travel site Expedia.com found that a third of employed U.S. adults "usually" do not take all of the vacation days they receive in a year.
    When asked why not, 11 percent of respondents said they were banking their time in hopes of getting money back for unused vacation days. Other top responses involved the hassle of scheduling days off or not being able to coordinate their days off with those of a spouse.
    Meanwhile, 37 percent of respondents said they regularly work more than 40 hours per week.
    Cindy Aron, a former University of Virginia history professor and author of an exhaustive history of the American vacation, "Working at Play," notes a circular logic.
    "What made people middle-class in the 19th century was not only the sort of work they did and the sort of homes in which they lived, but the sort of values to which they aspired: hard work, sobriety, self-control, discipline," she says. "Adhering to these values were what allowed them to accumulate the resources to become middle-class and to take vacations. Being on vacation threatened to undermine those values."
    De Graaf's proposed law, which figures to languish behind more pressing legislation, attracted immediate disdain from political conservatives and business interests. Opponents complained such legislation is "one more step toward socialism" (and "becoming France"); is too expensive for employers; and an obstacle to America's competitiveness in the world economy.
    They also said the legislation is unnecessary because most American workers already get paid vacation time.
    De Graaf was taken aback by the intensity of the opposition because he was criticized by the other end of the spectrum for pushing a too-modest proposal.
    Some see this as an odd time to push for paid vacation. Unemployment is high, jobs are being outsourced, companies are under stress to do more with less, and employees find themselves working harder to make ends meet while facing cutbacks, unpaid furloughs and the threat of job loss.
    But Michelle Rupp, owner of NRG, a 12-employee Seattle insurance-brokerage company, feels this is the best time to talk seriously about vacations.
    "The profit-only model in corporate America is not working," she says. "Plants oil their machines and turn them off at night. We don't run them 24/7. So why do businesses feel they shouldn't help their workers rest and recharge?"
    Rupp's company, started by her father in the early '70s, has won national awards for bringing flexibility to the workplace. The company also starts workers at two weeks paid vacation and awards an additional monthlong paid furlough every five years.
    Rupp is rigid about one thing: When her employees take vacations, they must take at least a week. That's the minimum that she believes is necessary to feel disconnected from work. She believes rested workers are better workers.
    "I'm just carrying on what my dad did," she says. "He got it."
    De Graaf learned the value of free time as a kid hiking through Yosemite National Park with his father. At 14, he went backpacking with friends for two weeks. As a high-school senior, he hiked and camped with a buddy for six weeks. Those experiences stuck with him, and he continues to take wilderness excursions with his own son.
    In 1994, de Graaf coproduced a PBS documentary called "Running Out of Time," which solidified his thinking. He joined the voluntary simplicity movement but felt the need to go past anti-consumption and efficiency messages. He felt time was the missing — or disappearing — link. Along with colleagues, he started Take Back Your Time to give a "policy dimension" to the simplicity movement.
    "I recall a class at the University of Wisconsin in 1968 in which the professor said automation and technology would create a crisis of too much leisure time.
    "I told myself that's a problem I could deal with," he says. "But that leisure crisis never came."
    Richard Seven: 206-464-2241 or rseven@seattletimes.com
    If you go
    The National Vacation Matters Summit will be held Monday through Wednesday at Pigott Auditorium, Seattle University campus. Registration costs $50 for the full conference, $25 for students. Most of the presentations will be on Tuesday. Details: www.timeday.org/
    We're number 11!
    According to a study commissioned by Expedia.com, the average number of vacation days* employed adults will receive in 2009:
    1. France 38 days
    2. Italy 31 days
    3. Spain 30 days
    4. (tie) Germany 27 days
    Austria 27 days
    6. Great Britain 26 days
    7. New Zealand 21 days
    8. (tie) Canada 19 days
    Australia 19 days
    10. Japan 15 days
    11. United States 13 days
    * Based on the mean of all employed adults, including those who get no vacation time.

    [Note four updates buried in the following more recent article -]

  • Europe reluctantly deciding it has less time for time off, by Mark Landler, 7/7/2004 NYT, front page.
    ...Since the 1970's, Europeans have been willing to accept somewhat slower growth in wages as a price for fewer work hours and longer vacations.
    - The French have an average of 25 vacation days a year,
    - while the Germans get 30 days.
    - The average in Japan is 18 days
    - and in the United States, 12 days....

    [The nagging US vacation issue came up in a Time magazine article in the millennial year -]

  • What you need is more vacation! - A crusading editor wants three to four weeks mandated by law, by Steve Lopez of Santa Monica, 6/12/2000 Time, 8.
    Congratulations, ace. America's unprecendented economic gains were beaten out of your work-obsessed hide, and what have you got to show for it? A few extra bucks to pay the shrink or the barkeep? A promotion that bumps you up to 60 hours a week? A pager? The bone they haven't thrown you is the one you desperately need - more time away from the salt mine.
          According to a raft of recent studies, Americans are working more and enjoying it less. Between 1995 and 1999, the number of people calling in sick because of stress more than tripled. "I've got a lot of clients coming to me from Silicon Valley," says Pam Ammondson...who runs a Santa Rosa...workshop to counsel...burnout [sufferers]. "It's a dream to make a million dollars overnight. But these people are not happy, their relationships are miserable, and they're taking a step back to ask what it's all about"....
          Joe Robinson...of Santa Monica...an adventure-travel magazine editor, has been on talk shows nationwide pitching a law that would guarantee three *weeks of vacation to anyone who works at a job for a year and four weeks after three years. On his website Escapemag.com [unfortunately defunct by 1/11/2002 - ed.], Robinson rants, "We're the most vacation-starved country in the world." [His campaign has] gathered 20,000 petitioners for longer vacations. "Small-business employees get an average of eight days off, while Europeans and Australians receive four to six weeks' paid leave," says Robinson. "In total hours, we now work two months longer each year than the Germans."
          John Schmitt of the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington, puts the average American vacation at 16 days. If not for their higher unemployment rate, the Europeans would be laughing at us.
    [They're laughing at us anyway, because of our much higher working-poor, welfare, disability, homelessness and incarceration rates - but we never talk about the 2,000,000 American inmates that "justify" the brutal nightmare of our corruption-bloated prison-industrial complex. We want the illusion that we're better than anybody else. Hey, we're the Land of the Free. Right? RIGHT?!! OK, attitude problem, we're locking you up for contempt of Court!]
    Anyone who travels has noticed that whether you go to Palm Springs or Timbuktu, the French and Italians [and Australians - ed.] are already there. You could parachute onto an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean and find 200 Germans lounging around talking about where to go next.
          The European economy may be a bit sluggish [or is it just non-bubble? -ed.], but just how productive, really, is the U.S. approach? "Half of all Americans report some kind of stress, and 63% say they'd rather have more time off than more money," says Robinson. "We have no identity outside of work, and there's this new glorification of the tech guy who works 18 hours a day...."
          "It costs us 150% of an annual salary to replace an employee in terms of retraining a new person, the turbulence it causes in a unit and the impact on our client," says Denny Marcel, associate director of the burnout-prevention unit at Ernst & Young. Miller calls the accounting firm, which offers 3-5 vacation weeks to its 20,000-plus employees, one of the better companies when it comes to lightening the load.
          Robinson...hopes a debate on the bottom-line realities of burnout will inspire a rash of enlightened self-interest among employers....

    A Los Angeles Times article around 2/06/00, from a recent survey by the World Tourism Organization, presented even more dramatic average annual vacation figures, in *vacation days -

    Average 
    annual 
    vacation 
    Italy 42 Brazil 34 So. Korea 25
    France 37 Britain 28 Japan        25
    Germany 35 Canada 26 USA 13

    A Boston Globe article explained the curious American system for denying themselves -
    Who has the time? It's work, work, work, by Gary Cross, 7/08/2001 BG, D8.
    Once again it's summer, and many of us are anticipating or enjoying our two-week vacations. We may be grateful - ...until we hear that the Germans get 30 days of paid vacation and the French enjoy five weeks.... While Italian workers are entitled to an average of 42 vacation days, Americans receive only 13..\..
    [Note this is three days less than the number for Americans in last year's Time article quoted above.]
    They earn the time off not after 10 or 20 years of loyalty to a company [and who escapes downsizing that long in the U.S. any more?!] but as a legal right from the first year of work.
    In the United States, employees in middle and large-sized companies usually have to wait five years before getting the third week of vacation, and often have to work for 25 years before they get the fourth....
    Why do we, of all the wealthy nations, seem to get or take so few vacation days? Perhaps because trade unions and traditions of social entitlement are so weak in America. Paralleling the great union advances in the mid-'30s...
    [How ironic that the garbage bag of trinkets with which FDR lured American labor away from their power lever (shorter hours) in the mid-'30s is still mistaken for "great union advances." In fact, they were signing their own death warrant - though World War II's massive withdrawal of labor hours from the job market gave them a one-generation stay of execution.]
    ...about half of American wage earners received company vacation plans in 1940, up from 5% in 1920. But this trend was restricted to larger companies.
    [The result of the failure to design and implement an automatic system of Fluctuating Adjustment of the Workweek to offset unemployment during the Great Depression, or even to pass an appropriate rigid workweek for the time continued the huge power gradient between employees and employers that induced the Depression in the first place (by focusing employers on producing stuff and concentrating income without thinking about who in the world was going to buy all the stuff) and resulted in the following Attitude among American (and other AngloSaxon) employers -]
    ...American employers continue to see vacations as a gift to valued and loyal employees....
    [Oh yeah, strictly lone-sided loyalty, employee-to-employer. By contrast -]
    Most European countries long ago made paid vacations a legal right.
    [And whereas today (July/2001) in the U.S. -]
    ..\..according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, blue-collar workers in smaller firms, where unions are nearly non-existent, still get only 6.8 paid vacation days on average, compared with 8.6 days for clerical and sales employees.
    [in Europe, by contrast -]
    ...Even workers at McDonald's restaurants...get 3-5 weeks' vacation.
    This entitlement dates back to the years between the world wars when [European] governments began not only to set maximum workdays (similar to our 40-hour standard [legislated in] 1938 [to take effect in 1940, after stepping down from 44 hours in 1938 and 42 hours in 1939]) but also legislated vacation rights.
    For example, the two-week vacation was one of the great victories of the Popular Front in France in 1936. The paid holiday was the only idea that the left and right shared. Both believed that wage earners should have an extended vacation to escape crowded cities and factories long enough to return to ancient villages or the seaside for family reunions. By the 1960s...Europeans had discovered sunny Spain and Greece on their own continent and world travel as their governments extended vacations with each advance in national prosperity.
    Today, the French add to their vacations by trading in hours won from their newly reduced workweek of 35 hours for longer getaway time.
    This "luxury" of leisure [our quotes - ed.] has not seemed to affect productivity in France or elsewhere in Western Europe, where output per labor hour has surged in recent years despite an average work year of 1,737 hours (compared with 1,562 hours in Germany and 1,365 in the Netherlands).
    [Gary Cross, as an historian with his brain in the past, may be forgiven for thinking that productivity still has some connection with manhours, but most of our economists, analysts and media people share this view, even though it has now be completely obsoleted by wave after wave of worksaving and output-multiplying technology for decades now.]
    But isn't America still the richest country in the world, and don't at least the professional and self-employed classes have the choice to take more time from work?... For many profession[als] and entrepreneurs, working longer than wage earners is a point of pride [or classist snobbery - ed.]. Some...feel lost without their laptops or cell phones, even on holidays [even *touring holidays].... The leisurely two-week, cross-country vacation [of] the '50s and '60s seems like a quaint...custom today..\.. The long weekend getaway by air to an expensive resort or casino is increasingly common.... Especially in downsized corporations, where one worker may be doing to job of two, there's [only] that kind of time to spare....

    For the latest from the UN's International Labor Organization on the average number of working hours per year in 16 industrialized countries, see "Consider this... by the numbers," 7/08/2001 #3 on our timesizing pages. On the average number of working hours per week in 11 countries, see "Koreans put in most time on the job, survey shows," 6/6/2001.

    Timesizing.com's view on all this is that vacation is just the icing. The cake is the amount of time off we get each and every week. For details on how we could cut the workweek while achieving continuous training in the workplace, on a gradual market-oriented basis, see our "social software" manual Timesizing, Not Downsizing, which is available online from *Amazon.com and at Harvard Books and the Harvard Coop (3rd floor) in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass., USA.

    Comments, questions, suggestions? E-mail us or phone 617-623-8080 (Boston).

    * (asterisk) before hotlink = link to external site

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