It’s no secret that many workers are not using all their vacation time, but there is some goods news. According to a new report, workers are actually using more vacation days than have in the past seven years. Project Time Off reports that the average American worker used 17.2 vacation days last year, up from 16.8 in 2016 and the highest amount since 2010 (17.5)
But even with this increase, the report finds that 52% of employees still wound up with unused vacation time by the end of 2017, which is a decrease of just 2% from 2016. That translates to 705 million unused vacation days, which is an increase from 662 mil in 2016, with the increase in unused days likely due to employees earning more days.
Overall, most Americans do think it’s important to travel during their time off (84%), yet most use less than half of their time, just eight days, to escape somewhere. As for what’s keeping them from traveling, cost is the biggest barrier (71%), followed by kids (45%) and pets (39%).
- But interestingly, cost, kids and pets don’t actually affect the amount of vacation time people take off. The one factor that most affects the days people use is work. Employees concerned about how taking vacation would make them look at the office are the least likely to use all their vacation time (61% not used vs. 52% overall), while those who felt their workload was too heavy left 57% of their days on the table, and those who feel no one else could do their job left 56%.
Source: Project Time Off