International Comparisons of Quality-of-Life Indicators THE RIGHT TO VACATION: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE Rebecca Ray and John Schmitt This report reviews international vacation and holiday laws and finds that the United States is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers any paid vacation or holidays. As a result, one in four U.S. workers do not receive any paid vacation or paid holidays. The lack of paid vacation and paid holidays in the United States is particularly acute for lower-wage and part-time workers, and for employees of small businesses. This report also includes a comparative appendix with information on paid leave and holiday laws in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. 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 5 and 13 paid holidays per year. In the absence of government standards, almost one in four Americans have no paid vacation and no paid holidays. According to government survey data, the average worker in the private sector in the United States receives only about 9 days of paid vacation and about 6 paid holidays per year: less than the minimum International Journal of Health Services, Volume 38, Number 1, Pages 21–45, 2008 doi: 10.2190/HS.38.1.b http://baywood.com 21