US Workers give back average of 4 vacation days, as French use 39 days

[papau]

Expedia.com's sixth annual "Vacation Deprivation" survey found that Americans are likely to give back more than 574 million vacation days in 2006, with each employed US adult age 18 and older anticipated to leave an average of four vacation days on the table (as a point of comparison, employed adults in France receive an average of 39 days of vacation each year, with two in five (40%) taking a 3-4 week vacation during the summer holidays). The number of vacation days each American is estimated to abandon in 2006 increased by one additional day over last year, boosting the number of total unused vacation days by more than 150 million versus 2005. A third of Americans do not always take all of their vacation days, according to the report
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Also of interest I thought was this tidbit from the national survey by ntl:Telewest Business : In the UK workers are misusing telephones and e-mail at the office, wasting two hours, 10 minutes each day at work, of which one hour and 38 minutes was due to communication technologies not being properly utilized, as 42 minutes are spent each day waiting for or chasing responses to urgent or e-mails, 42 min. on unnecessary e-mails, 27 minutes wasted responding to voicemails or managing phone calls, and 12 minutes lost trying to locate colleagues.
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FOR COMPARISON - LAST YEARS REPORT:
http://press.expedia.com/index.php?s=press_releases&item=220
Expedia.com Survey Reveals that American Workers Are Estimated to Leave More Than 421 Million Vacation Days On The Table in 2005
Americans Fall Far Behind Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands When It Comes to Taking a Vacation

BELLEVUE, Wash – May 17, 2005 – Expedia.com®, the world’s leading online travel service, recently commissioned its fifth annual "Vacation Deprivation" survey, conducted by Harris Interactive®, and uncovered that Americans1 are likely to give back more than 421 million vacation days in 20052, with each employed U.S. adult anticipated to leave an average of three vacation days on the table this year. In fact, nearly a third (31 percent) of Americans reported that they do not always take all of their vacation days, despite almost half (48 percent) admitting that they come back from a vacation feeling rested, rejuvenated and reconnected in their personal life.

"Americans’ state of Vacation Deprivation is unfortunately becoming a disturbing trend – one with a definite price tag," says Kari Swartz, Expedia.com product manager for leisure travel. "This year alone, the value of the vacation days that Americans are projected to give back is estimated at almost $54 billion3."

This year for the first time, Expedia® expanded its popular survey internationally and reached out to the working populations of Canada4, France, Germany, Great Britain, and the Netherlands to uncover how they utilized their vacations. Compared to other countries included in the survey, Americans’ vacation attitudes and habits definitely stood out as an anomaly. For example, U.S. workers received the least amount of vacation days (12 on average), were most likely to work over 40 hours a week (35 percent), and tied with Canada for giving back the most vacation days per person (3 days on average). This paints a very bleak picture that hopefully will inspire Americans to adopt the more healthy vacation habits demonstrated by the other countries included in the survey:

France wins the distinction for being the vacation champions, with each employed adult receiving an average of 39 days and with nearly half (45 percent) taking at least one 3-4 week vacation a year.
German workers are vacation lovers too, receiving an average of 27 vacation days, with 56 percent reporting that they always take all of their vacation days.
Employed workers in the Netherlands receive an average of 25 vacation days each year, with the majority (62 percent) planning on taking at least one vacation lasting up to two full weeks.
Adults employed in Great Britain may receive the least amount of vacation days in the European countries surveyed (23 days), but they definitely appreciate each and every vacation day…and then some, with 40 percent saying that they’d sacrifice a day’s pay to get an extra day off.
Employed Canadian adults receive an average of 20 days of vacation – easily beating out their neighbors to the South. And more than half (54 percent) use all of their vacation days.
So, when Americans do get around to vacationing, what do they do? According to the survey, it’s all about the family: Almost a third (31 percent) say that they spend most of their vacation time traveling with their immediate family and 27 percent say that they visit out of town family and relatives. Plus, 38 percent of U.S. adults anticipate using the majority of their vacation time for 2005 by taking one full week and then using the remaining days throughout the year.




Survey Methodology
Harris Interactive® fielded the online survey on behalf of Expedia.com between April 15 and 19, 2005 among nationwide cross-sections of 2,130 adults aged 18+ in the United States, 2,124 adults aged 16+ in Great Britain, 2,236 adults aged 16+ in France, 2,236 adults aged 16+ in Germany, and 1,200 adults aged 16-64 in the Netherlands. The European data were weighted to be representative of the total adult populations of each country on the basis of region, age, sex, education, income and propensity to be online. The U.S. data were weighted to be representative of the total U.S. adult population on the basis of region, age within gender, education, household income, race/ethnicity and propensity to be online. Though this online sample is not a probability sample, in theory, with probability samples of this size, Harris Interactive estimates with 95 percent certainty that the results for the English, French and German samples have a sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points and sampling error for the U.S. and Dutch samples is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Sampling error for the following sub-sample results: U.S. employed adults (1,329), British employed adults (1,297), French employed adults (1,320), German employed adults (1,467), and Dutch employed adults (1,000) is higher and varies. Note: The Canadian data referenced in this release were not gathered by Harris Interactive Inc.

1The term “Americans” refers to employed U.S. adults aged 18 and over within this announcement.
2Calculated by taking the average of 3 vacation days left on the table per 140.5 million employed Americans, as provided by the Bureau of Labor & Statistics.
3Calculated by taking 421.5 million vacation days left on the table times an average daily wage of $127.60, as provided by the Bureau of Labor & Statistics.
4Canadian survey conducted by Ipsos-Reid. All other surveys conducted by Harris

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. some give up their vacations so they can work more

so they can buy more useless stuff.

Some of us give up our vacations, so we can work more so we can pay the light bill.

:(

[papau]

2. If you are gone more than a week OUTSOURCING or new younger

cheaper hire is the threat for the older folks.

[jedicord]

3. I'd like to see 2 surveys, separating salaried and hourly employees.

Many hourly employees don't take vacation days because it literally costs them to take the time off, since they would miss the overtime they are used to getting.

I'm in HR and take care of the tracking on vacation/sick days. The salaried employees never "lose" vacation days. The majority of the hourly employees do.

[papau]

4. Good point n/t

n/t

[Odin2005]

5. The curse of the Calvinist work ethic

here in the US people who want to have free time are called lazy. :eyes:

[Warpy]

6. I know nurses took few vacations

becasue they couldn't afford to lose the overtime. My coworkers would do a real vacation every 3 or 4 years. They couldn't afford the two weeks without overtime any more often than that.

It's an evil system designed to work us to death for fewer rewards every single year.

If people in this country realized how they were being SCREWED, they would be out in the streets burning stuff down.

[FILAM23]

12. I don't know where you are getting your info

or where you live. But I work at 5 different hospitals
and all the nurses there take all the vacation they can get.
As for me I take my alloted 4 weeks a year and if there
is not enough money to go any where then I just set around
on the porch drinking cold beer.

[papau]

7. Link to this years study

http://www.vacationdeprivation.com/.

[Sammy Pepys]

8. Clearly this survey didn't talk to most fo the people I know....

3-4 weeks of vacation are the norm.

[sabbat hunter]

9. i get 20

i get 20 "PTO" days per year. PTO stands for personal time off. lumps together personal days, sick days and vacations into one lump. we can roll over some our days though to the following year if we do not take them all. so theoretically i can have 30 days off next year.

[Greyhound]

10. One of my businesses depends on locals taking vacations and I have

been shocked at how many vacations have been canceled by employers at the last minute, after tickets have been bought and reservations made. Everyone here is so afraid of losing their jobs they just take it.

[kineneb]

11. what is a vacation?

I am now caretaker for Hubby, who is on dialysis. That means for him: three days/week, three hours/day, hooked up to a machine at the clinic. I don't even get a real weekend, since his days are Tue/Thurs/Sat. Come hell or high water, the schedule has to stay the same.

And when I worked away from home, I didn't get vacation time, because it was a one-person office, and I was it. No work, no pay; at $10/hr. there was never enough money to take time off.