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Saturday, October 25th, 2014

Why Americans are taking fewest vacation days in four decades

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Publication Date:     7:30 pm, October 23, 2014
 Link: Why Americans are taking fewest vacation days in four decades
Stephan:   This is such a sad story about American culture. People are so insecure about their jobs and the economy is so dodgy that they don't feel that they can even take even the modest vacation time -- the smallest amount of time off of any industrialized nation --  to which they are entitled.

beachFeeling buried by work, like you can’t find time for a few days off, like your entire work-life balance is out of whack?

If you’re an American worker, it just might be.

A new study has found that U.S. workers forfeited $52.4 billion in time-off benefits in 2013, and took less vacation time than at any point in the last four decades.

American workers turned their backs on a total of 169 million days of paid time off, in effect “providing free labor for their employers, at an average of $504 per employee,” according to the study.

Titled “All Work and No Pay: The Impact of Forfeited Time Off,” the study was conducted by Oxford Economics for the U.S. Travel Association’s Travel Effect Initiative, which studies the impact of forgone vacation time.

“Americans are work martyrs,” says the U.S. Travel Association (USTA). “Tied to the office, they leave more and more paid time off unused each year, forfeiting their earned benefits and, in essence, work for free.”

According to the study, in 2013 U.S. employees took an average of 16 days of vacation compared to an […]

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