American Workers Are Letting a Third of Their Vacation Time Go to Waste: Report

American workers are notoriously deprived of paid time off (PTO). New data suggests that even when they’re given time off, they don’t take full advantage of the perk.

In 2023, 62% of workers with PTO did not use all of their vacation time, letting a third of it go to waste, according to a survey released Wednesday by Sorbet, a fintech lending firm. Of them, 5.5% didn’t take any time off last year.

The share of Americans with unused PTO is “climbing at an alarming rate,” the Sorbet report stated, nearly doubling since 2019. The company found that the average cash value of all that unused PTO comes out to nearly $3,000 per worker.

PTO in the USA

According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. is the only member country to not federally guarantee any paid time off to workers.

By comparison, workers in OECD or European Union nations typically get at least 20 days of paid time off annually, the organization said. Paired with observed public holidays, that number is realistically over 30 in most cases.

As a company perk, most full-time employees in the U.S. do get some paid time off. Sorbet’s survey found that the average PTO policy last year was 15 days off — but workers typically used only 10 of them.

Sorbet’s findings largely mirror a report released in June from the travel site Expedia.

Dubbed the “Vacation Deprivation Report,” Expedia’s 24th installment of the annual survey awarded America the tongue-in-cheek “gold medal for taking fewest vacation days in the world.”

Here’s how the U.S. stacked up against other areas around the globe included in Expedia’s report:

• France: average of 31 days of paid vacation time
• Germany: 29 days off
• UK: 27 days off
• Hong Kong: 26 days off
• Australia: 21 days off
• New Zealand: 21 days off
• Singapore: 20 days off
• Canada: 19 days off
• Japan: 19 days off
• Mexico: 16 days off
• U.S.: 12 days off

In the report, Melanie Fish, head of public relations at Expedia, explained that Americans may not be able to control the amount of paid time off they get, but they should break the “horrible habit” of not using all of the vacation time they do get.

“Clearly,” she said, “there’s a lot for the U.S. to borrow from [other countries].”

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