No-Vacation Nation: Comparing the U.S. to Other Wealthy Nations

The United States is the only rich, democratic country in the world that does not guarantee workers the right to paid vacation. As a result, 23 percent of the US civilian workforce — or about 33 million workers — lack any paid vacation, and the amount that employers provide voluntarily — an average of 10 days per year — falls well below even the legal minimum required in almost all comparable world economies.¹

Figure 1 summarizes the most recent available data on the legally required minimum annual vacation days across the rich, democratic countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).² Twenty-five of the countries require employers to provide at least 20 paid vacation days per year. Four of these set the minimum at 25. The minimum in the United Kingdom is 28 days per year. The legal minimum in the remaining five countries in the figure is somewhat lower: Korea (15), Mexico (12), Israel (12), Japan (10), and Canada (10).³

However, uniquely among OECD countries, the legal minimum in the United States is zero. In the absence of a legal requirement, private-sector employers, on average, provide only 10 days of paid vacation per year.

The legally required minimum days of paid vacation in the countries in Figure 1 apply to all workers — regardless of part-time or full-time status, pay level, or employer-size. By contrast, access to voluntarily provided paid vacation in the United States is highly unequal (Figure 2). Low-wage workers are far less likely than higher wage workers to have employer-provided vacation. More than half (57 percent) of the lowest-paid 10 percent of workers have no paid vacation. For workers in the bottom quarter of earnings, 43 percent have zero paid vacation days. Even at higher wages, the share without paid vacation is not small. Fifteen percent of workers in the top 10 percent have no employer-provided paid vacation. Part-time workers and workers in small firms are also far less likely than full-time workers or workers in larger firms to have employer-provided paid vacation.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Hayley Brown, Peter Hart, Brandon Novick, and Virginia Rutter for many helpful comments, and to authors of earlier editions of this series of “No-Vacation Nation” reports: Rebecca Ray, Milla Sanes, and Adewale Maye.

Appendix 1: Estimating average paid vacation days in the United States

The US government does not produce estimates of the average number of paid vacation days for the workforce as a whole. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) National Compensation Survey⁴ (NCS), however, regularly collects information on employer-provided paid leave, broken down by job tenure.

The US estimate of the average voluntarily provided paid vacation days in Figure 1 uses this information to derive the 10-day figure in two stages.

The first stage involves calculating the average number of days of paid vacation available to workers whose employers provide paid vacation. This calculation (1) uses the March 2025 NCS to estimate the average number of paid vacation days granted per year for civilian workers at different levels of tenure in firms that offer paid vacation; and (2) assumes that those in the first year of tenure receive half of the total paid vacation days provided to workers with one to three years of tenure (the NCS does not provide its own estimate); and (3) weights the available vacation days by job tenure data for civilian employees, using the distribution of workers by job tenure from the January 2024 Current Population Survey Displaced Worker, Employee Tenure, and Occupation Mobility Supplement.⁵ Note that the March 2025 NCS estimates for the civilian workforce exclude the 1.8 percent of the civilian workforce employed in the federal government in 2025 and the CPS Job Tenure data used here are limited to workers ages 18 to 85.

The second stage uses the resulting first-stage estimate of 13 days of paid vacation per year for those workers whose employers offer paid vacation to produce the estimate of 10 days of paid vacation for all workers in the “United States, Average Provided” in Figure 1. The ten-day figure is the weighted average of (1) the 13-day estimate applied to the 77 percent of the civilian workforce with access to paid vacation and (2) the zero days available to the 23 percent of the workforce with no access to paid vacation.

Appendix 2: Sources for National Minimum Mandatory Paid Vacation Days

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden

See Figure 9 “Minimum number of days of paid annual leave, EU 27 and Norway, 2024”

European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, “Balancing the clock: How Europe works and rests,” October 6, 2025, https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/en/publications/all/balancing-the-clock-how-europe-works-and-rests

Australia

“An employee (other than a casual employee) accumulates 4 weeks of paid annual leave for each year of service with the employer. An employee’s entitlement to annual leave accumulates continuously based on the number of ordinary hours they work.”

Fair Work Ombudsman, “Annual leave fact sheet,” https://www.fairwork.gov.au/tools-and-resources/fact-sheets/minimum-workplace-entitlements/annual-leave, accessed July 24, 2026.

Canada

Paid annual leave in Canada is primarily set at the provincial level. Nine of the ten Canadian provinces set the minimum at two weeks or ten days per year. The one exception is Saskatchewan, which requires three weeks (15 days).

British Columbia: Government of British Columbia, “Annual vacation” (https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment-business/employment-standards-advice/employment-standards/time-off/vacation), accessed July 24, 2026.
Manitoba: Government of Manitoba, “Vacations & Vacation Pay” (https://www.gov.mb.ca/labour/standards/doc,vacations,factsheet.html), accessed July 24, 2026.
New Brunswick: Government of New Brunswick, “Vacation and Vacation Pay” (https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/departments/post-secondary_education_training_and_labour/People/content/EmploymentStandards/vacation.html), accessed July 24, 2026.
Newfoundland and Labrador: Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, “Labour Standards: Annual Vacations” (https://www.gov.nl.ca/ecc/faq/labourstandards/#vacation)
Nova Scotia: Government of Nova Scotia, “Vacation leave and pay” (https://novascotia.ca/lae/employmentrights/vacationleavepay.asp), accessed July 24, 2026.
Ontario: Government of Ontario, “Your guide to the Employment Standards Act: Vacation” (https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standards-act-0/vacation)
Prince Edward Island: Government of Prince Edward Island, “Vacation and Vacation Pay” (https://www.princeedwardisland.ca/en/information/workforce-and-advanced-learning/vacation-and-vacation-pay), accessed July 24, 2026.
Quebec: Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST), “Annual vacation” (https://www.cnesst.gouv.qc.ca/en/working-conditions/leave/annual-vacation), accessed July 24, 2026.
Saskatchewan: Government of Saskatchewan, “Vacations and Vacation Pay” (https://www.saskatchewan.ca/business/employment-standards/vacations-and-vacation-pay), accessed July 24, 2026.

Canadian workers covered by federal, rather than provincial law, are entitled to a minimum of two weeks (10 days) of paid vacation per year.

Government of Canada, “Annual vacations and general holidays for employees working for federally regulated employers,” https://www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/workplace/federal-labour-standards/vacations-holidays.html#h3.1, accessed July 24, 2026.

Iceland

“The minimum holiday entitlement is … 24 days a year, based on full-time job ratio.”

island.is, “Holidays and holiday allowance Number of holidays”

https://island.is/en/holidays-and-holiday-allowance, accessed July 24, 2024.

Israel

The Annual Leave Law entitles all employees with one year of tenure to receive 14 days of paid annual leave if they work a six-day week and 12 days of paid annual leave if they work a five-day week.

Annual Leave Law, 5711-1951

https://natlex.ilo.org/dyn/natlex2/natlex2/files/download/36148/ISR36148.pdf

Japan

“General workers (workers with 5 or more prescribed working days per week or 30 or more prescribed working hours per week)” and one-half year of continual employment: 10 “number of days granted.” increasing in increments to 20 days granted after 6.5 years of continual employment. (p. 7)

Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Prefectural Labor Bureaus, Labor Standards Inspection Offices, “Working Conditions Handbook,” 2025.

https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/11200000/001471591.pdf

Mexico

“Employees in Mexico are entitled to at least 12 paid vacation days after they’ve completed one year of service.”

Vacation Tracker, “Mexico Leave Laws and Holidays,”

https://vacationtracker.io/leave-laws/north-america/mexico/, accessed July 24, 2026.

Endnotes

For earlier data and analysis of paid vacation in the United States and other rich, democratic economies, see Adewale Maye, “No-Vacation Nation, Revised,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 2019, https://cepr.net/images/stories/reports/no-vacation-nation-2019-05.pdf; Rebecca Ray, Milla Sanes, and John Schmitt. “No-Vacation Nation Revisited,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 2013, https://cepr.net/documents/publications/no-vacation-update-2013-05.pdf; and Rebecca Ray,and John Schmitt, “No-Vacation Nation,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 2007, https://cepr.net/documents/publications/2007-05-no-vacation-nation.pdf.
For legibility, Figure 1 excludes European countries with a 2020 population of less than four million people. All excluded countries have minimum requirements of at least 20 days, per the European Union’s Working Time Directive. See European Commission, “Working Time Directive,” https://employment-social-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies-and-activities/rights-work/labour-law/working-conditions/working-time-directive_en, accessed August 1, 2026.
These statutory guarantees of paid vacation apply across essentially all employees in the countries in Figure 1. The national legal frameworks do not exclude low-wage or part-time workers or small firms. See, for example, the European Union’s Working Time Directive, https://employment-social-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies-and-activities/rights-work/labour-law/working-conditions/working-time-directive_en.
For more information on the National Compensation Survey, see Employment Cost Index (ECI), https://www.bls.gov/eci/; Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (ECEC), https://www.bls.gov/ecec/home.htm; and Employee Benefits, https://www.bls.gov/ebs/.
The data on job tenure used here are drawn from the IPUMS extract of the Current Population Survey Job Tenure Supplement for January 2024; see Sarah Flood, Miriam King, Renae Rodgers, Steven Ruggles, J. Robert Warren, Daniel Backman, Etienne Breton, Grace Cooper, Julia A. Rivera Drew, Stephanie Richards, David Van Riper, and Kari C.W. Williams. IPUMS CPS: Version 13.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2025. https://doi.org/10.18128/D030.V13.0