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Most countries provide between 20 and 40 paid days off
- ramijames 3mo agoWhat is going on in the US is nothing short of shameful.
- dayyan 3mo ago[flagged]
- InsideOutSanta 3mo agoAssuming you're serious, as a European, I applaud your willingness to hurt yourself so we can have transistors and also have 40 days off each year.
- TheOtherHobbes 3mo agoUS inventiveness peaked in the 50s and 60s, when corporate taxes were much higher, education, housing and healthcare were far cheaper, wealth was more evenly distributed, and government investment in infrastructure and R&D was more about delivery than corporate/academic grift. Perhaps there's a reason it has declined since.
- pudgywalsh 3mo ago> healthcare were far cheaper In the 60s people would often die from ailments that are now solved with routine outpatient procedures. Cars were cheaper too but it turns out all that emissions and safety equipment costs money.
- philjohn 3mo agoAlso post war Europe had to rebuild, the US didn't - and lots of scientists headed west.
- vladgur 3mo ago100% disagree. SmartPhones, Cloud, AI. Just three things that happened in the past 20 years and were brought to the world by US companies.
- strictnein 3mo agoAnother example: the first commercial cell phone network was in Chicago in 1983, brought to us by AT&T and Motorola. What could be more impactful to modern existence than that?
- wao0uuno 3mo agoWorld would be a better place without those inventions.
- strictnein 3mo ago> US inventiveness peaked in the 50s and 60s How does one even measure that? And who would even try and claim that? > when corporate taxes were much higher The corporate tax rates in the 70s and 80s were just as high as they were in the 50s and 60s [0]. And the capital gains taxes were actually lower during the 50s and 60s than they were in the 70s and 80s. Why did inventiveness stop if the higher tax rates were helpful? 1952-1963 Over $25,000 52% 1975-1978 Over $50,000 48% ($50k in 1978 is ~$21k in 1952) So the tax rate was ever so slightly lower, but kicked in sooner, once you compare apples to apples. But surely Reagan did some bad things, right? The maximum tax rate on capital gains was capped at 34 percent for 1987 From April 1, 1954, through Calendar Year 1969, the maximum tax rate on capital gains was 25 percent. > government investment in infrastructure and R&D was more about delivery than corporate/academic grift Grift in the 50s and 60s was pervasive and everywhere. Eisenhower was warning about the Military Industrial Complex in 1961. [0] https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/historical-corporate-tax-rates-brackets/ https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/historical-corpor...
- SubmarineClub 3mo ago> wealth was more evenly distributed, Maybe…of course, those were also decades where companies would comp executives with cars, apartments, vacation homes, &c. Plus other perks like expensing ‘business meetings’ at strip clubs.
- croes 3mo agoCountries invent nothing, people do. And I bet those who invented transistors and the internet had plenty of days off. BTW if work would be a privilege, you would have to pay to do it
- qurren 3mo agoThe more innovative companies in the US tend to have generous vacation policies. I think what the article is really about the rest of the country. In Europe, even service industry people get 4-6 weeks off per year. In the US service industry that is unheard of.
- encrypted_bird 3mo agoI work in the US service industry (retail), and until recently I didn't have sick time at all. The only reason I do now is because I'm a part of a union (very rare for retail workers) and they argued for sick time. And it's accrued sick time at that. (This is all me agreeing with you, btw.)
- isgb 3mo agoI guess it depends on what your personal priorities are. I’d say most Europeans prioritize their families, friends and life _away from work_ over work, but maybe you don’t. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- strictnein 3mo agohttps://www.bls.gov/charts/employee-benefits/paid-leave-sick-vacation-days-by-service-requirement.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/employee-benefits/paid-leave-sick... Could be better for sure, but a graph showing the US as having 0 days of paid days off because the federal government doesn't mandate anything is misleading at best. Average US worker after 1 year of employment earns 7 sick days and 11 vacation days. And likely has some state and federal holidays off as well, and could very well qualify for state required PTO and sick time. But that doesn't get clicks and attention. More data, if one is curious: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs2.t06.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs2.t06.htm
- richwater 3mo agoI think an interesting point here is there is no substantial difference between allocated vacation days if you work for the government or a private employer. One would think the government would set a good example.
- Faaak 3mo agoI wouldn't take into account sick days, because this article doesn't also.
- strictnein 3mo agoI was mentioning it because the data does and also to get ahead of people claiming that US PTO includes sick time, when it mostly doesn't.
- rendx 3mo agoThe point is that it is a limited amount of paid sick days, which is a completely foreign concept in most places (pun intended).
- InsideOutSanta 3mo ago> earns 7 sick days Including sick days makes the calculation worse, not better. Sick days typically don't exist in Europe. If you're sick, you obviously just don't go to work. What's the point of infecting the whole office? On average, workers in Europe take about 2 to 3 weeks off each year due to sickness in addition to their vacation. In fact, if you're sick during vacation, that doesn't count as vacation time, at least in some European countries.
- giancarlostoro 3mo agoI've never worked at a job that didn't offer some form of PTO, only exception is when you are doing contract work and not a full time employee, you simply take time off when the rest of the company does for no pay during those windows of time.
- ChocolateGod 3mo agoThe US has generally higher wages than Europe and lower taxation rates. Those paid days off are not free.
- cynicalsecurity 3mo agoThis comment needs to be pinned.
- TheOtherHobbes 3mo agoThe areas with the highest wages are disproportionately more expensive, and the personal risks forced on both workers and the unemployed are far dangerous. (Esp lack of healthcare.)
- strictnein 3mo agoWhat do you mean by "lack of healthcare" exactly? Are you under the impression that it's hard to get healthcare in the US? Or that the average healthcare experience is extraordinarily expensive?
- tripleee 3mo agoIt's easy if you're employed by a reasonable company. Healthcare being so tied to your employer is so anti-labor it's unbelievable.
- Tade0 3mo agoSwitzerland has all that and paid days off on par with the rest of Europe.
- greggoB 3mo agoI think we're slightly below average with 20 vacation days per year as the legal minimum (compared to 25 on average in the EU?). Still significantly higher than the US, and with notably higher income/GDP per capita, so indeed it doesn't seem to be some linear tradeoff.
- dmitrygr 3mo agoThe country that does not, invented more or less every modern technology (transistors, ICs, wifi, microwaves, cellular). Mayhaps there is something to it.
- bena 3mo agoMost of those things were invented by a company granted a government monopoly on communications and not allowed to directly profit off of any of those advances. AT&T threw money at smart people and said, "Do stuff. Then we'll see if we can use it" No one does that anymore.
- WorldMaker 3mo agoThe big one on the list that wasn't AT&T was microwaves and that was a contractor to Nasa [0] in the heat of the moon race and a similar "Do stuff. Then we'll see if we can use it" mandate. [0] Defense contractor Raytheon most specifically.
- bena 3mo agoI think that's one thing people truly forget when they ask "Why can't we do things like this anymore?" AT&T paid people to fuck around. Claude Shannon, father of Information Theory, founder of Artificial Intelligence, and namesake to Anthropic's flagship product, was also busy building flame-throwing trumpets and rocket frisbees while creating entire new fields.
- harvey9 3mo agoSo why can't I order a rocket frisbee today? Wtf America.
- functionmouse 3mo ago[flagged]
- ErroneousBosh 3mo agoYou didn't invent microwaves. Well, your lot invented the klystron. Know what a klystron is? No? Well there you are. But I bet you know what the cavity magnetron - invented in Scotland - is. You probably used one today already. Cellular phones were invented in the UK and Finland. The US didn't even have them until the first couple of generations were obsolete here. Transistors were invented in Germany, although they were made practical in the US, I'll them that.
- cinntaile 3mo agoWhy does it say 0 for the US? You have Thanksgiving, Christmas, 4th of July and more? Are they unpaid days off?
- nemomarx 3mo agoI think they're technically not federally mandated. Businesses can be open on Christmas at their discretion and require workers to come in.
- tarxvf 3mo agoThe rest of the world seems to believe that if the government doesn't mandate it, it doesn't happen.
- victorbojica 3mo agowell, then what happens when the company decides to revoke your pto? where do you put that into the statistics?
- strictnein 3mo agoBecause it gets more attention if they ignore reality and treat a lack of a federal mandate as meaningful information.
- panzagl 3mo agoIt depends on the job and is not mandated to be paid, or even given off.
- WorldMaker 3mo agoDepends on the company. The US maintains no requirements, federal holidays are a suggestion, not a mandate. A few states inside the US upgrade federal holidays to state holidays to required paid time off. Most don't. In the US paid holidays are a corporate "tradition" more than a regulated common good. Even US federal employee holidays vary between agencies and branches of government.
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- vacayacct 3mo ago[dead]
- johndhi 3mo agoI guess thinking from first principles probably the ideal is neither government mandating days off nor their behind terribly hard to come by. Better imo would be - if I personally accomplished something meaningful and valuable and 'earned' time, then I am strongly incentivized to take time. Also it taking time will help my health and wellness meaningfully then I should also be incentivized to do so. But that seems impossible to setup if we aren't all our own business owning entrepreneurs.
- drdaeman 3mo agoFrom the first principles, I suspect it’s an attitude thing, management-to-individual-contributors relationships. If management treats ICs as equals and tries to form a healthy human-centric culture, you get unlimited PTO. If the management treats ICs as tools to do the work and tries to squeeze maximum performance per dollar out of that biomass, you get sweatshops with zero time off. Incidentally things correlate with ICs replaceability - the more replaceable an individual is, the less reasons to care (see a work-performer as a human with needs and problems and ) business owners have. Plus, the wellbeing of the business is a likely factor - the more breathing space it gets, the more it could afford (unless greed and lack of long-term planning kills everything) to be less financially optimal short-term for long-term prosperity. Regulations are means of pushing the bottom line back at scale. They should be unnecessary in ideal humane society, but that’s not a thing. I wonder whether there’s a way to shift the culture somehow… but there seems to be no political will for that, because it’s certainly not any popular agenda point.
- braiamp 3mo ago[dead]
- kelseyfrog 3mo ago[flagged]
- bluefirebrand 3mo agoI dont want to derail the conversation about the article but what's with two separate accounts posting within 5 minutes of each other both going off about America inventing transistors? I wonder how much vacation time the people who invented the transistor took each year. Edit: up to three mentions of transistors now. Bizarre
- 1234letshaveatw 3mo agoThat is surprising, unlike the expected USA bad rhetoric
- MichaelNolan 3mo agoI’m assuming the data for Europe is largely correct, but a lot of the per country data doesn’t pass the smell test to me. Afghanistan (35 days), Libya (45), Yemen (46), etc. what percentage of workers there are getting that many paid days off? Edit - the original source even had the audacity to label Yemen with a “smiley face” since it has the most paid days for the region.
- gweinberg 3mo agoOf course, nobody really gets paid for days off, anywhere, ever. Salaries are prorated, people are paid for the days they actually work.
- yreg 3mo agoOf course not, but there is a strong default option effect. And more often then not an employee _has to_ take the exact amount of vacation that's mandated in their country.
- SubmarineClub 3mo agoAre you talking about in Europe? Because at my company, in the US, I am not required to take any time off. I can bank any amount I want and spend it when I prefer. And it explicitly is treated as a paid day of work.
- db29a0dbcd3b 3mo ago[dead]
- yreg 3mo agoAll I wanted from this article was a table with the list of countries and the amounts of paid days off, but the chart labels only 16 countries. The referenced source includes an image with all of the values: https://www.moorepay.co.uk/app/uploads/2025/07/01_Which-Countries-Get-the-Most-Paid-Time-Off-1-scaled.png?x79412 https://www.moorepay.co.uk/app/uploads/2025/07/01_Which-Coun...
- zeristor 3mo agoAs I understand it the UK holiday requirement includes bank holidays. I was a bit surprised.