Could you use a vacation right about now? Most of us probably feel long overdue for one, as new research reveals Americans are more vacation deprived than ever. But according to Expedia’s 24th annual Vacation Deprivation Report that just came out, about half (53%) of Americans aren’t planning to use all their time off this year.
- Their study looks at the time-off trends around the world and this year’s involves 11,580 respondents from the U.S., U.K., Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
- It finds that American vacation deprivation - “the feeling of not having enough time off” has hit an 11-year high at 65%.
- The thing is, Americans aren’t using all their vacation time, despite only getting an average of 12 days off a year, which is the fewest of any country in the study.
The Vacation Deprivation Report reveals:
- Japanese workers take about the same number of days off annually as Americans, at 11, but Japan has the lowest vacation deprivation level of any country at 53%.
- In Japan, workers are seven times more likely than U.S. workers to vacation every month (32% versus 5%) even though they only get one more day of paid time off than Americans. How do they do it? Taking advantage of federal holidays, office and school closures to get shorter trips and long weekends.
- France and Hong Kong both take off nearly a month over the year.
- French respondents tend to spread their vacation days out evenly throughout the year, rather than take one big trip.
- Hong Kong is the only country in the study where respondents don’t leave vacation days unused, instead they take more time off than they’re given, on average.
- Germany is the most vacation-deprived country this year at 84%. The global average is 62% and in the U.S. it’s 65%.
- Americans are almost twice as likely as the rest of the world to go a year or longer between vacations (32% compared to 18% globally).
Source: Expedia