The Horrible Reason why Americans don't take all their Vacation Days

Here's a horrific quote: "The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation."

Ouch!

The statement is from a recent report, No-Vacation Nation, written by Rebecca Ray and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The report paints a sorry picture of the American workplace which columnist Ezra Klein has expanded upon in his rather depressing analysis, Keeping up is Getting us Down.

"Every other advanced economy offers a government guarantee of paid vacation to its workforce," Klein states, rattling off the number of days guaranteed in Britain (20), Germany (24), and France (30). And then, just to make us Americans feel worse, he throws out a couple more statistics to really hammer the point home.

10% of full-time employees in America get no vacation
60% of part-time employees in America get no vacation
Those who do get vacation take only 12 days a year on average

Klein explains this tragedy as the result of misplaced incentives. Americans, he argues, are more concerned with directing their earnings towards "positional goods." These are products which allows one to compete with the goods purchased by others in the same socio-economic class. In other words, it's the keeping-up-with-the-Jones syndrome in which Americans are obsessed with improving their "standard of living relative to their neighbors."

And, as a result, they are willing to sacrifice vacation time to get ahead.

Hmm... I'm not sure I entirely agree with this, but I do have to admit knowing quite a number of fellow Americans who never end up taking all of their vacation days in a given year. Of course, they all have nicer cars and houses than I do...

GADLING