Going On Holiday

Depending on where in the world you call home, the amount of vacation time you receieve from your employer will vary. Here in the US the average worker gets ten days to do with as they please, with a few national holiday observances thrown in throughout the year. For a travel enthusiast, ten days is not a lot to work with. When my wife and I went to France last year, we used our entire ten days, in the beginning of the year, leaving us nothing for the rest of the year. To add insult to injury, the French we met pitied us for our lack of time off. "It's so unfortunate," they would say with sympathetic eyes and warm pats on the back.

Turns out, France has the highest amount of minimum vacation days required by law...SEVEN WEEKS! No wonder they felt sorry for us.  Denmark comes in second with six weeks. Germany, Finland, and Austria also rank high.

You can check out the country-by-country comparison here.

Our lack of usable days in the US has really bothered me for the last year. But hey, at least I'm not in China where employers aren't required to give their employees any days off.