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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
America is rapidly falling into cyberpunk dystopia.
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.
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.
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.
You can live paycheck to paycheck and still accrue PTO. Also vacation day doesn't mean spending money on a trip.
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.
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.