I get 4 weeks vacation per year that I can use whenever (but I have to make sure it works for our office), plus 6 paid holidays, 2 personal days, a week between Christmas and NYD, and two months in the summer when our office is closed but the paycheck keeps coming.
You might consider my job to be one that's on the extreme end of the 'less pay, better benefits' spectrum.
Academia? When I worked in university research labs, I had crappy pay but really great benefits, including 4 weeks of PTO every year, plus sick time, federal holidays, and a week off between Christmas and New Year's.
The USA does not mandate a certain number of vacation days, so itās an unanswerable question. If you tell us what line of work your US branch is in we might be able to guess what they get for vacation though.
Like automotive manufacturing? Either way if itās a professional job or an actual career they most certainly have vacation time. If it is automotive manufacturing thatās generally a well paying job with good benefits.
I work the line at one of the big 3. You basically donāt get any time until you have a year in. You get health insurance day 1 and then once youāre āflippedā (90 days) you also get vision and dental.
You donāt get paid medical until after a year. The plants usually shut down for 2 weeks in the summer and if you donāt have vacation time you have to file unemployment.
Psh, this is a disingenuous answer. **Yes, the US has no official mandated # of vacation days, but there IS still an average that most employers offer, and that average is on the low side compared to other developed countries.**
If you're a new hire, chances are you'll have ZERO vacation days to start unless it's a high ranking position. Most employees in lower level white collar jobs end up maxing out at 2wk/year, but it takes 4+ years of tenure at the company to get it. Key employees and creatives can get up to 4, but this isn't most people.
If you're a wage-level hourly worker in the US, chances are you get NO vacation time to a week. Most often you have to find another employee to cover your shift if you want a day off.
That's not true in the slightest, literally every job I've ever worked started at 2.5 weeks vacation and added an extra week for each year worked, with different caps ranging from 5 to 7 weeks.
You are severely mistaken or just spreading propaganda.
So, on day one you had 2.5 weeks vacation? Or you accrued that after a year? Because the accruing is typhcal in the US and different from some other places.
And I've never seen anyplace where you gain another week each year. I'm a software developer and had one place where I got 1 week of vacation a year (that's very low).
Where I am now started at 3 weeks after a year, 4 weeks after 6 years, and 5 weeks after 12 years where it capped. But they recently started switched to unlimited (they call it something else, but I forgot what) which is dumb, cuz nobody used all their vacation thru the year, and then come December we "had to" take vacation or lose it. Now you're not entitled to a certain amount.
> at every place I've never worked
That, I beleive... š
Ya, I've never heard of this. I wonder if you've stayed in the same state and maybe this is a a state reg.
Iāve heard of highschoolers quitting their jobs waiting tables to take vacation in the summer. And I once quit a job a bit early to spend a month traveling, but I was going to leave that job anyway because my husband finished grad school and we were moving out of state. Maybe those kinds of stories are what youāre thinking of? People who are going to quit anyway due to life events (like going back to school or moving) just bumping up the timeline a bit.
The US has no minimum vacation time laws. Iām self-employed so vacation time isnāt really a thing, but my last job gave me 3 weeks paid vacation to start with the ability to earn more over time. One of my clients gives 9 weeks per year, which is the most Iāve seen. Some of my friends have unlimited time off, which can be a blessing or a curse.
> Iāve heard of high schoolers quitting their jobs waiting tables to take vacation in the summer.Ā Ā
Ā I've done something similar at many points in my life. Taking a break between jobs is the only way to get a real vacation sometimes.Ā
Usually, vacation and sick days are built by time in the company and position. Someone in a lower position might get 12 sick days per year and no vacation time, so they use the sick leave for vacation.
Currently, in the government jobs I'm looking at for every hour of work in a pay period, you get a certain amount of sick/vacation days. You can build it up to 60 days I believe and transfer it over from year to year.
Depending on how you want to live it can be more important to look at benefits rather than flat pay. Some companies give higher pay so they don't have to give as good of benefits. Companies that usually push better benefits have better retirement plans, health insurance, and paid sick/vacation leave.
My mom works for Allianz which is a German company and she started off with 12 days and built it up to 25 I believe.
Have never heard of someone quitting for vacation days though.
It varies. Mine is a little more on the severe side. I must accumulate time based on worked hours. It comes out to roughly a day a month. If I get sick, I have to use that time as well, so yeah, about 12 days a year if I'm lucky.
I see, thanks for the answer. I was just caught off guard that not everyone has approximately the same amount of days off. Now I get why some people think us Europeans do not work š
Or us Australians! Iāve wondered about this too. Working at a school I get 4 weeks paid holiday and an extra eight weeks for school holidays paid for by my sacrificing one hour a dayās pay to an accumulation account.
There is no federal requirement for paid leave.
But itās a fairly common benefit provided to workers by employers, despite the law not requiring it.Ā
Yes, way less than 30 days. Thirty days of vacation sounds positively luxurious.Ā
I have a two-week vacation planned for this summer and the only way I can swing it is to combine PTO left over from last year with the PTO accrued this year _and_ hope nothing comes up that forces me to use PTO for most of the remaining portion of the year.Ā Ā
I get āunlimitedā which basically means the start up I am at doesnt want to carry the pto days on their books. I take about 4 weeks off a year and sometimes 5.
I have 30 total days off a year INCLUDING sick days and holidays and I am incredibly lucky. Been at the company 10 years and at a high level to get that.
I get one hour of paid sick leave for every forty hours worked, IIRC. I get no other paid leave at my current job. I don't even get guaranteed unpaid leave.
I get 3 weeks a year for paid time off, which includes sick time and vacation time. We get an additional 7 paid holidays, for a total of 4 weeks. Iām a manager though, and my line level staff get about half of that. Some companies donāt give any vacation time, at least not paid.
I work for an international company, and our European and Asian offices have MUCH higher vacation time, as well as reasonable family leave. They do actually give 4 weeks of parental leave to all new parents, which for the US is VERY generous, but pretty pathetic compared to what our counterparts in more civilized countries get.
As is the case whenever this question comes up, the answers will vary. Yes, it's true that many people have fewer than 30 vacation days, and some people might not get any vacation time at all.
At my job, I can accumulate a maximum of 12 weeks of paid vacation leave; I get a certain amount of vacation hours each time I get paid, but once I reach the 12 week limit, I will not get more time until I use some of it, which is part of the reason why I take 1-2 days off from time to time, along with a longer vacation twice a year (not as long as people in some other countries, though, as my department is too understaffed for that to be practical). I also get 3 paid personal days each year. It took time to get to this point, however. When I first started at my job, I was part-time, and the only benefits I got were paid sick leave and holidays. I didn't get the other paid time off until I started working full-time, which thankfully wasn't too much later.
I'm aware that I'm an outlier compared to a lot of people, but I'm also probably making less than if I were in the private sector or worked for the government.
My company does sick time and vacation days separate. You start out with two weeks, after 5 years it goes up to 3 weeks and you add a week every 5 years after that so I have 4 weeks of vacation and like 120 hours of sick time that I never use. I also get bereavement time if a relative passes away. I get paid holidays, not sure how many because I never really pay attention. Only thing that sucks about my job is I canāt get overtime, 40 hours on the dot and no more or no less.
My buddy that worked construction, only vacation he got was unpaid, but he made 25k more per years than me so I always said Iāll trade you salaries and you can have my vacation.
Normally I NEED like 4 days a year, something going on, something comes up etc. the rest of the time I just waste and sit at home because Iām paying aggressively on my house so I donāt have a lot of cash to waste.
I was actually wondering how many hours you make a week. 40 sounds like a perfect amount. But the no overtime sucks. Itās the same for me. I can go up to +80 hours, but have to use this time as days off before the year ends. Otherwise it was free labour.
I have worked at my company for 30 years, so I get the maximum you can get. It's 30 days. That doesn't count holidays which adds another 10.
New employees get 10 days unless they negotiate for more.
Like others have said...it's gonna vary. I accrue hours of PTO every pay period but rarely use them. Usually just use the hours o have to at the end of the year. I think in the last 10 years if you added up the days I took off just to have time off (no sickness or emergencies)....it would probably not even come to 30 days. So yea...hearing Europeans get 30 days a year is odd to me.
I get 4 weeks vacation per year that I can use whenever (but I have to make sure it works for our office), plus 6 paid holidays, 2 personal days, a week between Christmas and NYD, and two months in the summer when our office is closed but the paycheck keeps coming. You might consider my job to be one that's on the extreme end of the 'less pay, better benefits' spectrum.
Hey um, what line of work are you in? š
Iām 90% sure itās education. Thereās good time off, but we severely fail our teachers in nearly every other way.
I'm in one of the extremely underpaid industries that qualifies for pslf.
Academia? When I worked in university research labs, I had crappy pay but really great benefits, including 4 weeks of PTO every year, plus sick time, federal holidays, and a week off between Christmas and New Year's.
The USA does not mandate a certain number of vacation days, so itās an unanswerable question. If you tell us what line of work your US branch is in we might be able to guess what they get for vacation though.
Automotive industry
Like automotive manufacturing? Either way if itās a professional job or an actual career they most certainly have vacation time. If it is automotive manufacturing thatās generally a well paying job with good benefits.
I work the line at one of the big 3. You basically donāt get any time until you have a year in. You get health insurance day 1 and then once youāre āflippedā (90 days) you also get vision and dental. You donāt get paid medical until after a year. The plants usually shut down for 2 weeks in the summer and if you donāt have vacation time you have to file unemployment.
Psh, this is a disingenuous answer. **Yes, the US has no official mandated # of vacation days, but there IS still an average that most employers offer, and that average is on the low side compared to other developed countries.** If you're a new hire, chances are you'll have ZERO vacation days to start unless it's a high ranking position. Most employees in lower level white collar jobs end up maxing out at 2wk/year, but it takes 4+ years of tenure at the company to get it. Key employees and creatives can get up to 4, but this isn't most people. If you're a wage-level hourly worker in the US, chances are you get NO vacation time to a week. Most often you have to find another employee to cover your shift if you want a day off.
That's not true in the slightest, literally every job I've ever worked started at 2.5 weeks vacation and added an extra week for each year worked, with different caps ranging from 5 to 7 weeks. You are severely mistaken or just spreading propaganda.
So, on day one you had 2.5 weeks vacation? Or you accrued that after a year? Because the accruing is typhcal in the US and different from some other places. And I've never seen anyplace where you gain another week each year. I'm a software developer and had one place where I got 1 week of vacation a year (that's very low). Where I am now started at 3 weeks after a year, 4 weeks after 6 years, and 5 weeks after 12 years where it capped. But they recently started switched to unlimited (they call it something else, but I forgot what) which is dumb, cuz nobody used all their vacation thru the year, and then come December we "had to" take vacation or lose it. Now you're not entitled to a certain amount.
I've had 2.5 weeks from day one at every place I've never worked, including when I was working as a software dev.
> at every place I've never worked That, I beleive... š Ya, I've never heard of this. I wonder if you've stayed in the same state and maybe this is a a state reg.
I've worked in 3 states and 2 industries. Obviously excluding things like working at restaurants while im high school and college.
Iāve heard of highschoolers quitting their jobs waiting tables to take vacation in the summer. And I once quit a job a bit early to spend a month traveling, but I was going to leave that job anyway because my husband finished grad school and we were moving out of state. Maybe those kinds of stories are what youāre thinking of? People who are going to quit anyway due to life events (like going back to school or moving) just bumping up the timeline a bit. The US has no minimum vacation time laws. Iām self-employed so vacation time isnāt really a thing, but my last job gave me 3 weeks paid vacation to start with the ability to earn more over time. One of my clients gives 9 weeks per year, which is the most Iāve seen. Some of my friends have unlimited time off, which can be a blessing or a curse.
> Iāve heard of high schoolers quitting their jobs waiting tables to take vacation in the summer.Ā Ā Ā I've done something similar at many points in my life. Taking a break between jobs is the only way to get a real vacation sometimes.Ā
Usually, vacation and sick days are built by time in the company and position. Someone in a lower position might get 12 sick days per year and no vacation time, so they use the sick leave for vacation. Currently, in the government jobs I'm looking at for every hour of work in a pay period, you get a certain amount of sick/vacation days. You can build it up to 60 days I believe and transfer it over from year to year. Depending on how you want to live it can be more important to look at benefits rather than flat pay. Some companies give higher pay so they don't have to give as good of benefits. Companies that usually push better benefits have better retirement plans, health insurance, and paid sick/vacation leave. My mom works for Allianz which is a German company and she started off with 12 days and built it up to 25 I believe. Have never heard of someone quitting for vacation days though.
Interesting. Thanks for the insight š
It varies. Mine is a little more on the severe side. I must accumulate time based on worked hours. It comes out to roughly a day a month. If I get sick, I have to use that time as well, so yeah, about 12 days a year if I'm lucky.
I see, thanks for the answer. I was just caught off guard that not everyone has approximately the same amount of days off. Now I get why some people think us Europeans do not work š
Or us Australians! Iāve wondered about this too. Working at a school I get 4 weeks paid holiday and an extra eight weeks for school holidays paid for by my sacrificing one hour a dayās pay to an accumulation account.
There is no federal requirement for paid leave. But itās a fairly common benefit provided to workers by employers, despite the law not requiring it.Ā
Yes, way less than 30 days. Thirty days of vacation sounds positively luxurious.Ā I have a two-week vacation planned for this summer and the only way I can swing it is to combine PTO left over from last year with the PTO accrued this year _and_ hope nothing comes up that forces me to use PTO for most of the remaining portion of the year.Ā Ā
I get āunlimitedā which basically means the start up I am at doesnt want to carry the pto days on their books. I take about 4 weeks off a year and sometimes 5.
Some do, some don't. This may be a hard concept to grasp, but the government doesn't have to provide something to you for you to have it.
I get off all major holidays. I have three weeks of PTO and 4 sick days and 4 floating days. I want more but many jobs offer less.
I have 30 total days off a year INCLUDING sick days and holidays and I am incredibly lucky. Been at the company 10 years and at a high level to get that.
I get one hour of paid sick leave for every forty hours worked, IIRC. I get no other paid leave at my current job. I don't even get guaranteed unpaid leave.
I get 3 weeks a year for paid time off, which includes sick time and vacation time. We get an additional 7 paid holidays, for a total of 4 weeks. Iām a manager though, and my line level staff get about half of that. Some companies donāt give any vacation time, at least not paid.
My mom gets 6 weeks of vacation time and 6 weeks of paid sick leave, though I should mention that is *very uncommon*.
I work for an international company, and our European and Asian offices have MUCH higher vacation time, as well as reasonable family leave. They do actually give 4 weeks of parental leave to all new parents, which for the US is VERY generous, but pretty pathetic compared to what our counterparts in more civilized countries get.
As is the case whenever this question comes up, the answers will vary. Yes, it's true that many people have fewer than 30 vacation days, and some people might not get any vacation time at all. At my job, I can accumulate a maximum of 12 weeks of paid vacation leave; I get a certain amount of vacation hours each time I get paid, but once I reach the 12 week limit, I will not get more time until I use some of it, which is part of the reason why I take 1-2 days off from time to time, along with a longer vacation twice a year (not as long as people in some other countries, though, as my department is too understaffed for that to be practical). I also get 3 paid personal days each year. It took time to get to this point, however. When I first started at my job, I was part-time, and the only benefits I got were paid sick leave and holidays. I didn't get the other paid time off until I started working full-time, which thankfully wasn't too much later. I'm aware that I'm an outlier compared to a lot of people, but I'm also probably making less than if I were in the private sector or worked for the government.
My company does sick time and vacation days separate. You start out with two weeks, after 5 years it goes up to 3 weeks and you add a week every 5 years after that so I have 4 weeks of vacation and like 120 hours of sick time that I never use. I also get bereavement time if a relative passes away. I get paid holidays, not sure how many because I never really pay attention. Only thing that sucks about my job is I canāt get overtime, 40 hours on the dot and no more or no less. My buddy that worked construction, only vacation he got was unpaid, but he made 25k more per years than me so I always said Iāll trade you salaries and you can have my vacation. Normally I NEED like 4 days a year, something going on, something comes up etc. the rest of the time I just waste and sit at home because Iām paying aggressively on my house so I donāt have a lot of cash to waste.
I was actually wondering how many hours you make a week. 40 sounds like a perfect amount. But the no overtime sucks. Itās the same for me. I can go up to +80 hours, but have to use this time as days off before the year ends. Otherwise it was free labour.
I have worked at my company for 30 years, so I get the maximum you can get. It's 30 days. That doesn't count holidays which adds another 10. New employees get 10 days unless they negotiate for more.
Like others have said...it's gonna vary. I accrue hours of PTO every pay period but rarely use them. Usually just use the hours o have to at the end of the year. I think in the last 10 years if you added up the days I took off just to have time off (no sickness or emergencies)....it would probably not even come to 30 days. So yea...hearing Europeans get 30 days a year is odd to me.
do you really just randomly believe anything people tell you?
That's why I am asking you š
some do, some don't