{"id":17041,"date":"2011-06-22T11:51:22","date_gmt":"2011-06-22T16:51:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/?p=17041"},"modified":"2011-05-23T19:54:05","modified_gmt":"2011-05-24T00:54:05","slug":"americans-and-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/06\/22\/americans-and-vacation\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans and Vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

What do you think about vacations? Do you think we should mandate more weeks of vacation? Is this up to the employer?
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Germany is among more than two dozen industrialized countries \u2014 from Australia to Slovenia to Japan \u2014 that require employers to offer four weeks or more of paid vacation to their workers, according to a 2009 study by the human resources consulting company Mercer.<\/p>\n

Finland, Brazil and France are the champs, guaranteeing six weeks of time off.<\/p>\n

But employers in the United States\u00a0are not obligated under federal law<\/a> to offer any paid vacation, so about a quarter of all American workers don\u2019t have access to it, government figures show.<\/p>\n

That makes the U.S. the only advanced nation in the world that doesn\u2019t guarantee its workers annual leave, according to a report titled \u201cNo-Vacation Nation<\/a>\u201d by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal policy group.<\/p>\n

Most U.S. companies, of course, do provide vacation as a way to attract and retain workers.<\/p>\n

But the fear of layoffs and the ever-faster pace of work mean many Americans are reluctant to be absent from the office \u2014 anxious that they might look like they\u2019re not committed to their job. Or they worry they won\u2019t be able to cope with the backlog of work waiting for them after a vacation.<\/p>\n

Then, there\u2019s the way we work.<\/p>\n

Working more makes Americans happier than Europeans, according to a study published recently in the\u00a0Journal of Happiness Studies<\/a>. That may be because Americans believe more than Europeans do that hard work is associated with success, wrote Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn, the study\u2019s author and an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Dallas.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmericans maximize their\u2026 [happiness] by working, and Europeans maximize their [happiness] through leisure,\u201d he found.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So despite research documenting the health and productivity benefits of taking time off, a long vacation can be undesirable, scary, unrealistic or just plain impossible for many U.S. workers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do you think about vacations? Do you think we should mandate more weeks of vacation? Is this up to the employer? Germany is among more than two dozen industrialized countries \u2014 from Australia to Slovenia to Japan \u2014 that require employers to offer four weeks or more of paid vacation to their workers, according […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericans and Vacation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What do you think about vacations? Do you think we should mandate more weeks of vacation? Is this up to the employer? 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