According to CEPR, The Center for Economic and Policy Research, The United States is the only economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation. European countries have the legal rights to AT LEAST 20 days of paid vacation per year. Australia and New Zealand require at least 20 as well and Canada and Japan require at least 10 days. This also goes for holidays. According to CEPR, The U.S legally offers no paid holidays, whereas the rest of the worlds rich countries offer between 5 and 13 paid holidays per year.

Since employers would like to keep their employees, an average worker in the US receives about 9 days of paid vacation and about 6 paid holidays. But according to CEPR, about 1 in 4 Americans have NO paid vacation and NO paid holidays. This is because it is not being regulated by the government, so companies are shelling out as much or as little vacation time as they want. It also varies depending on the type of worker. According to a CEPR, lower wage workers have a 69% chance of getting some paid vacation time, while higher wage workers have 88% chance. It also varies depending on the size of the company. Smaller companies only 70% have paid vacations while at medium to larger companies 86% have paid vacations. This is less than the legal standard of other countries. The government should make this fair by mandating the amount of paid vacations and holidays American workers receive.

Some countries even have more paid leave for workers who are either younger or older. According to CEPR, Austria 5 extra days, Germany between 1-6 days and Switzerland an extra week. Norway also offers an additional week for anybody over 60 years old. 9European countries also regulate when their workers can take there allotted time off. For example some of these countries require their workers to take summer days off, France workers are required to take 12 summer days of paid vacation. Not only are all of these countries required to give paid time off, but some even up the pay during there employees vacations to accommodate there needs. Austria, New Zealand and Sweden are required to pay their employees at a premium rate. For example, Austria pays their workers a “13 month” salary as well as their usual monthly salary and is taxed at a lower rate.

This paid vacation time is so important in these other countries, that employers make sure you are taking all the vacation time you have allotted to you. In Australia, if you do not want to take all your vacation time, you can “cash out” half of it, getting extra pay. In the United Kingdom, workers are required to take there 4 weeks of vacation time and any extra time they are given by their employer they don’t take off, they can either get paid extra for or carry over the days to the following year.

Source: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/NoVacationNation_asofSeptember07.pdf