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What do you think about the difference in the minimum annual leave in the USA and in Europe? Firstly, I have to say that I live in Europe and have never visited USA. I have the information only from friends and from Internet.
In Europe, the minimum annual leave is usually 4 or 5 weeks and there are also public holidays.
I can´t imagine having only 2 weeks of holiday a year, especially with small kids. How do you cope with it? It seems to me that Americans have very little free time and because of short annual leave they can´t spend time with their family, travel and explore their beautiful country. They have to wait until retirement. A lot of people who travelled accross the U.S said to me that they had met very few American tourists.
I'm in the U.S. and I take more than 5 weeks off per year. In the U.S. your total package is extremely variable. If you want more leave, you simply find a job with more leave. If you want to work from home, you simply find a job that allows you to work from home. If you want free lunch, you simply find a job that offers free lunch. It's all over the place.
Vacation time is, for exempt employees at least, typically pretty negotiable. I've only had one where a job change took away any vacation time. Every other time, simply stating that I had more vacation at my previous job was enough to get that to be part of the offer. I now have 30 days of paid time off, combining vacation, sick time, personal time, and variable religious holidays. It is still a bit less than my German counterparts, factoring in everything, but I cannot complain.
Meanwhile, a very large contingent of workers in the United States (about 23%) work without a day of paid time off. You work: you get paid; you don't work: you don't get paid. [Source: Economic Policy Institute, March 2014.]
Vacation time is, for exempt employees at least, typically pretty negotiable. I've only had one where a job change took away any vacation time. Every other time, simply stating that I had more vacation at my previous job was enough to get that to be part of the offer. I now have 30 days of paid time off, combining vacation, sick time, personal time, and variable religious holidays. It is still a bit less than my German counterparts, factoring in everything, but I cannot complain.
Meanwhile, a very large contingent of workers in the United States (about 23%) work without a day of paid time off. You work: you get paid; you don't work: you don't get paid. [Source: Economic Policy Institute, March 2014.]
I suppose that this large contingent of workers are contract workers, freelancers etc.
On the contrary, most likely a very trivial amount of them are self-employed like that. Only 10% of Americans are self-employed, earning income from the profits of their own business. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of contract workers, freelancers, etc. actually are employed by employment agencies and such, and get paid time off from their arrangement with the agency itself.
So no, those getting no paid time off are not contract workers, freelancers etc. Practically all of those workers are in the bottom third with regard to wages. They are made up mostly of low-wage service workers of various sorts. Just looking at the bottom 10% of earners, 61% receive no paid vacation and 66% receive no paid holidays. [Source: Pew Research Center, 2014.]
What do you think about the difference in the minimum annual leave in the USA and in Europe? Firstly, I have to say that I live in Europe and have never visited USA. I have the information only from friends and from Internet.
In Europe, the minimum annual leave is usually 4 or 5 weeks and there are also public holidays.
I can´t imagine having only 2 weeks of holiday a year, especially with small kids. How do you cope with it? It seems to me that Americans have very little free time and because of short annual leave they can´t spend time with their family, travel and explore their beautiful country. They have to wait until retirement. A lot of people who travelled accross the U.S said to me that they had met very few American tourists.
Really depends on the job, company and wage earner. Not surprising some high wage earners make 6 figures and have more time off, their focus is on the WORK when working. But they can afford the private jets and the services for which they pay huge amounts for and thus, employ people and add to their pockets....
Lower wage earners (Raises hand) instead just wait to retirement and then carefully plan for an excursion...
In Europe you also have 10% unemployment because of all the employment rules and not bein able to fire anyone.
Do you think? It depends on the country, Germany has only 5 %, the Czech Republic as well...I suppose there are also differences in the rate of unemployment among the states in the U.S...But I am sure we do not have so many working people on food stamps as you in the USA.
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