Vox - Nine million Americans took a week off in July 1976, the peak month each year for summer travel. Yet in July 2014, just seven million did. Keeping in mind that 60 million more Americans have jobs today than in 1976, that adds up to a huge decline in the share of workers taking vacations.
Some rough calculations show, in fact, that about 80 percent of workers once took an annual weeklong vacation — and now, just 56 percent do.
It's not as if Americans are cutting back on an excessive vacation habit, either. The United States is the only developed economy that doesn't guarantee its workers a paid vacation. Most of its peer nations promise about 20 days off a year, according to a report by Rebecca Ray, Milla Sanes, and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
About a quarter of the American workforce doesn't get paid vacation, according to data they cite from the National Compensation Survey. The no-vacationers usually work part-time or for small employers in low-wage jobs
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Or we are "contract" employees whose definition of "vacation" is being unemployment between contracts.
Even those of us "middle class" who actually work for the company that hired us with PTO (personal time off) this "benefit" is your sick days, your half day to take the kid to whatever or wait for cable, and your actual "vacation" days (which you use to round out that odd day between Christmas, Thanksgiving, or "insert other of the four "paid" major holidays. Some Bank, Education, and Government employees actually receive 4 to 6 more days although for many they are not actually "paid holidays".
Of course if you actually dare to take 2 weeks to go on a cruise or that trip to the Grand Canyon, don't expect that you will continued to be employed since your absence was either not missed (causing management to reconsider the necessity of your employment) or your absence was so keenly missed that management has decided that they need to find someone not subject to prolong absences for your position.
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