Astro Hacker News - Quarter of American employees haven't taken a vacation day in the past year

msarrel |next [-]

I think it would be more accurate based on their methodology to say a quarter of American employees who are entitled to a vacation day have not taken a vacation day. This study omits people, like myself as a consultant, that don't get the vacation days awarded. I imagine the true number of Americans working without a vacation day in the past year is much higher.

pavel_lishin |next |previous [-]

I wonder what the demographics of those employees are, in terms of where they work. Is it a bunch of white collar programmers like most of the people on HN? Does it include a lot of grocery store workers? Does it include older people, whose retirement savings don't allow them to stop working, single parents with children depending on them, etc.

jerlam |root |parent [-]

The survey was conducted by Flexjobs, a job listing site focusing on remote positions. I'm not going to give them my contact information to check, but I would guess that it probably overrepresents temporary and entry-level positions at small to medium sized companies, not big-company corporate jobs that don't need to advertise on external job boards. These jobs would be for people with fewer options, less benefits, and more likely to get overworked.

I wouldn't conclude too much from a survey of only 3,000 employees.

derwiki |root |parent [-]

Isn’t a pool of 3000 sufficient to get statistically significant results?

jerlam |root |parent [-]

Sure, if you have specific information about the people polled and the general makeup of the population, you can extrapolate these results. I didn't see that it's happening here, it's just the results of a specific group who bothered to answer the poll.

Having 3000 responses doesn't automatically mean the results are meaningful. I can poll 5000 Facebook employees and get results that say 100% of them have a vacation plan and 90% of them have taken a day off in the past year.

teeray |next |previous [-]

It would be interesting to see the trend with the increasing adoption of "Unlimited PTO." Besides the accounting trick it provides, companies love that it suppresses used PTO.

Havoc |root |parent [-]

Can't speak for the US, but in the UK unlimited pto made zero difference. If anything pushed numbers up since you've still got the legislated 28 day minimum setting a floor while unlimited (theoretically) opened up the top

ender341341 |root |parent |next [-]

I'm in the US my last company migrated from set limit to unlimited.

Having the "You have X hours of PTO" made the expectations clear. Especially for less senior people who might not want to rock the boat or seem greedy. And while use it or lose it policies are overall bad, they do push people to take breaks instead of "saving it up for something good/important".

It also heavily depends on management. There's definitely some companies that do "unlimited w/ manager approval" with the manager expected to find ways to deny and those are 100% shit places to work, but not everyone gets a lot of choice on that.

dexwiz |root |parent |previous [-]

Are you required to take those 28 days? In the US there is no one telling you to take days, especially since unlimited PTO means businesses no longer have to pay out unused days.

With the constant stream of projects there is no opportune time. On top of that management rarely works vacations into capacity planning, so if you leave it just gets dumped on someone else. You are then disincentivize to take days, because your coworkers suffer for it.

Havoc |root |parent [-]

>there is no opportune time

>your coworkers suffer for it.

Yeah that's the cultural difference right there. People just go on leave whenever. If the company is so fragile that it can't survive someone being away for a bit (or sick) then it's inadequately staffed to be resilient.

That said I'm in an industry where replacing someone takes ~6 months so probably above average cautious on resilient staffing

>Are you required to take those 28 days?

Legally - don't think so, but the question just doesn't make sense in that context. Everyone's taking all their leave from what I can tell.

alexfromapex |next |previous [-]

America needs workers' rights or it's going to have a revolution.

holoduke |next |previous [-]

Always travelled a lot as a solo developer and noticed how few young Americans I saw travelling. The richest country on earth and yet I saw more germans, dutch and even Russian people. Then of course I learned that lots of Americans hardly have any vacation days. Sad thing.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF |root |parent [-]

We might be the richest country in terms of the top end but most people I know are broke with no career prospects into their late 20s

Air travel costs thousands and the lack of social safety nets means that only the most reckless, most Bohemian, or ones with loving parents feel like they have a safe home to come back to

cindyllm |root |parent [-]

[dead]

jiveturkey |next |previous [-]

Curious to know how they chose the survey sample. Because other surveys say 65% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck in 2025. So, 25% feels low.

dexwiz |root |parent |next [-]

You can live paycheck to paycheck and still accrue PTO. Also vacation day doesn't mean spending money on a trip.

milesvp |root |parent [-]

Parent may be surprised how many people live paycheck to paycheck because they take vacations.

I’ve recently come across a financial audit show that might be generously described as Dave Ramsey meets Jerry Springer. I get the impression from the show’s founder that he sincerely cares about the topic and wished someone would have presented the topic to his dumb younger self the way he does now. I also don’t think it’s scripted much, other than him getting clear yes/no on which highly personal topics he can approach, and potentially joke about.

The people he has on the show, I think are representative of a certain demographic, and I’m continually amazed at the amount of financial illiteracy and lack of appreciation for the financial ramifications of their actions.

Yeul |root |parent [-]

My brother used to have a highly paid corpo job.

Then he realised he didn't want to spend the rest of his life as a corpo drone and now he works 3 days a week. Ofcourse in Euro land that still gives you a pension and healthcare package. And he was lucky that he bought his apartment before the neighbourhood got gentrified.

_DeadFred_ |root |parent |previous [-]

A huge amount of those people working paycheck to paycheck don't have jobs that allow unpaid days off, let alone paid vacation days.

qwertfisch |root |parent [-]

Quite sad to read this. In Germany paid days off are mandatory by law (four weeks per year). Most branches give additional paid days, up to two more weeks. You are required to take the statutory four weeks, usually until end of March the following year. Some employers have less restrictive rules so that you can save vacation days for up to two or three years.

Even for minimally paid jobs and/or short term jobs the same laws apply, and the vacation days will be accumulated.

Ancalagon |previous [-]

America is rapidly falling into cyberpunk dystopia.