Americans Vacation Less Due To Work Related Stress
A survey released by Expedia.com finds that 34 percent of employed Americans will not use all of their earned vacation days in 2009. When asked why they are planning to not take a break from the office, the number one reply was “work-related pressure.”
On average, American workers will give back three vacation days this year, according to the ninth annual Vacation Deprivation survey performed by the opaque travel website. Expedia’s study also revealed that workers are taking fewer extended vacations, with the number of adults who plan to take a two-week vacation dropping to 10 percent in 2009, as compared to 14 percent in 2008.
Other interesting notes from the survey include:
- Women tend to feel guiltier than men when it comes to taking time off from work (40 percent of women vs. 29 percent of men).
- Roughly 39 percent of working Americans expect to use most of their vacation time in 2009 by taking at least one full week of vacation and spreading out remaining days.
- On average, Americans had 13 vacation days in 2009, one day less than the previous three years.
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Although French get the most days off, they were once polled as being the crankiest workers in the world.
So how did the rest of the world fare in the Expedia Vacation Deprivation survey? Well the site asked countries like Canada, Great Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Australia, Japan, and for the first time, New Zealand. This year, Canadian, French and Australian workers will be granted between one and two more vacation days than in 2008, while all other countries will either receive fewer vacation days or see no change in earned time off.
Want a lot of vacation time? Move to France, where the workers receive and use the most vacation days of all countries surveyed by Expedia. French workers receive 38 days and leave only two days unused.
Now while it may look gloomy for American workers, since we receive the smallest number of vacation days, Japanese employees are the least vacation-minded, as 92 percent of the workers polled said they would not use all vacation days and will leave an average of seven days on the table.
