Skift.com

Only 27% of American workers took ten or more vacation days in 2015

Skift.com has an article today: No Vacation Nation: 41% of Americans Didn’t Take a Day off in 2015. I used to think it was a sign of our times, but in reality, a lack of vacation days and travel is an historical trait in American culture. Every year I read reports from the U.S. Travel Association on the trend of Americans not taking vacation days.

Google Surveys Vacation Days

Skift.com No Vacation Nation

40.5% of Americans took no vacation days in 2015. 14% took 10 to 20 days and 13% took more than 20 days of vacation.

No surprise is millennial workers take the least time off. Slackers are not appreciated in the American workplace and time off is a slacker’s attitude in American culture.

My 80 Annual Working Vacation Days

I took more vacation days from writing in the past month than anytime in the past five years. My parents and sisters visited Monterey for the holidays. Rather than work everyday, I used much of my writing time to visit family. My daily readership dropped by 50% on some days during those two weeks.

At least it was my choice. I have had jobs where I was furloughed periodically for a week without notice to allow the company to save money by cutting my monthly income. Those kinds of experiences motivated me to become self-employed.

I travel about 80 days per year, but that is generally working vacation travel, since I tend to gather loads of information for travel articles from my trips and work daily on most travel days to write articles.

I have 18 travel days for trips to Europe lined up over the next five weeks. Follow along and read what it is like to be in the Netherlands in winter. You can get a little desktop travel to Europe through this American’s eyes until you have your own vacation time to use for travel or family or anything else that fulfills your time away from work.

Take those Vacation Days from work.

3 Comments

  • Danh January 18, 2016

    This made me look back at my days off in 2015 and surprisingly, I took 29 days off last year, not including holidays.

  • omatravel January 18, 2016

    I took more than 10 days between my annual vacation and the Christmas holidays. That also didn’t count my PTO while on work trips because in most cases it ended up as comp time due to flying on the weekends.

  • BOShappyflyer January 18, 2016

    Looking at 2015, I took about a little over 10+ vacation days (not including holidays), so I guess I did OK. I believe in taking vacation days too (otherwise, my job can burn me out very quickly). That said, I also intentionally refrain from taking more vacation days so I can carry them over for this year for a longer trip, so I will definitely take more vacation days this year.

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