Europe vs US / On vacations, dead last

In the global rivalry of economic models and lifestyles, the United States ranks dead last among advanced countries in one category: vacations. (Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor)

It’s not that millions of Americans don’t annually flock to beaches, climb mountains, invade national parks or just hang around the house. We do. But we seem to have a harder time than other peoples in distancing ourselves from work. The office (also, the store, factory or warehouse) is routinely an uninvited guest on our holidays.

We worry that we might be gone for “too long” — meaning that we won’t be missed and that any extended absences might somehow put our job or status at risk. Unfinished tasks haunt us; they corrupt vacations’ pleasures. Some of us can’t even let go of work and, secretly or not, mix it with recreation. Others dread returning to the job. One way or another, the job shadows us. The spread of the Internet, e-mail and cellphones has made separating work from leisure even more difficult. We are reachable at almost any time in almost any place.

Most of this is conjecture. What’s not conjecture are our laws and institutions, which — compared with those of other wealthy societies — devalue and de-emphasize vacations. A fascinating report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a left-leaning think tank, illuminates the vast differences. Here’s how the report, “No-Vacation Nation Revisited,” summarizes them:

“The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation. European countries establish legal rights to at least 20 days of paid vacation per year, with legal requirements of 25 and even 30 or more days in some countries.”

Read the whole story at  

via Robert Samuelson: Europe surpasses America on vacations – The Washington Post.