The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation. European countries establish legal rights to at least 20 days of paid vacation per year, with legal requirement of 25 and even 30 or more days in some countries. Australia and New Zealand both require employers to grant at least 20 vacation days per year; Canada and Japan mandate at least 10 paid days off. The gap between paid time off in the United States and the rest of the world is even larger if we include legally mandated paid holidays, where the United States offers none, but most of the rest of the world's rich countries offer between five and 13 paid holidays per year.
With the summer approaching most people like myself get in to vacation mode. Some save all year round the year prior for their next big vacation. Besides the fact that some companies do not offer ample vacation and those that do restrict how much you can take at one time, there are also people who simply do not wish to travel at all. I suppose we all have our priorities in life. For some people being fashion forward, buying the latest Manolo Blahniks or Red Bottomed Christian Louboutin shoes are at the forefront of their list. For others driving the latest luxury car or living in super sized mansion is their financial priority and there are those that love to travel. You might call them jet setters and often hear tales of their traveling around the world. I personally can not fathom wanting to never see the world with my own two eyes. Surely there are those people that can afford to live lavish lifestyles at home and jet set around the world but that is often reserved for the rich and famous.
So with that said how do you feel about your vacation time allotted for the year? Do you use it all up, let it roll over or waste it on "sick" days spent at home because you simply hate your job? Where in the world do you wish to travel next? Some people think that traveling isn't all that it's cracked up to be. There are definitely bloopers like the time I spent 6.5 hours in the airport waiting to fly back to Atlanta. But there are other times that are wonderful like when I toured the Mayan Ruins in Mexico last summer.
Share your favorite travel experience, you may open the eyes of another hoping to hop a plane in the near future! ☺ I so wished I had studied abroad in college!
Here are a few excerpts from the article entitled "Why is America the ‘no-vacation nation’?" By A. Pawlowski, CNN
(CNN) — Let’s be blunt: If you like to take lots of vacation, the United States is not the place to work.
Besides a handful of national holidays, the typical American worker bee gets two or three precious weeks off out of a whole year to relax and see the world — much less than what people in many other countries receive.And even that amount of vacation often comes with strings attached.Some U.S. companies don’t like employees taking off more than one week at a time. Others expect them to be on call or check their e-mail even when they’re lounging on the beach or taking a hike in the mountains.“I really would like to take a real, decent vacation and travel somewhere, but it’s almost impossible to take a long vacation and to be out of contact,” said Don Brock, a software engineer who lives in suburban Washington.“I dream of taking a cruise or a trip Europe, but I can’t imagine getting away for so long.”It’s a totally different story in other parts of the world.Nancy Schimkat, an American who lives in Weinheim, Germany, said her German husband, an engineer, gets six weeks of paid vacation a year, plus national holidays — the norm. His company makes sure he takes all of it.It’s typical for Germans to take off three consecutive weeks in August when “most of the country kind of closes down,” Schimkat said. That’s the time for big trips, perhaps to other parts of Europe, or to Australia or North America. Germans might also book a ski holiday in the winter and take a week off during Easter.Finland, Brazil and France are the champs, guaranteeing six weeks of time off.But employers in the United States are not obligated under federal law to offer any paid vacation, so about a quarter of all American workers don’t have access to it, government figures show.That makes the U.S. the only advanced nation in the world that doesn’t guarantee its workers annual leave, according to a report titled “No-Vacation Nation” by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal policy group.Most U.S. companies, of course, do provide vacation as a way to attract and retain workers.
