Working in America (Annual Leave situation)

[FamilyIsEverythingToMe]

People who have worked in the US of A, how much annual leave did you get?

I assume it varies massively state by state.

I have no intention of moving. I am just curious.

I have 25 days of annual leave. And I always choose to buy 5 more. And yes I live in the UK.

My understanding from a friend who is American is that the leave allowance is not very generous and most people don’t take it. They are worried about being away from the office. What they do is save it up and then take a long vacation.

It’s not state by state so much as company by company. I got 10 vacation days and 5 personal days, so in essence 3 weeks plus public holidays of which there are a few more than the UK so overall it wasn’t awful. This was a big US headquartered public company. DH worked for a British company and got 30 days (25 days as standard then 5 more for long service) plus public holidays.

To add: I spent manyyyy flights bouncing a toddler on my knee whilst working on a laptop with the inflight wifi because I couldn’t afford to take a vacation day for a travel day. Do not miss that!

25 days at manager level. The state has nothing to do with it. It’s company by company.

Oh. I thought there'd be state regulations

I started on 14 days per year and after 5 years go up to 17 days then after another 5 years I’ll be at 20 days - they do close between Christmas and new year so that’s worth another 3 days to me - not great - my DH gets 25 plus 3 ‘mental health’ days so a big range in different employers- he also gets between Christmas and New Year so he’s always saying let’s take a long weekend and I cannot - v annoying!

I'd say the average is 14 days annual leave and maybe 5 personal. Companies are getting stingy. Many get 3 weeks to use how you want, i.e., sick/annual in one lump. They're also close Xmas to New Years, but again they don't pay you. My daughter has to work most US holidays if she wants to not use her leave and get paid and she wirks for a decent size private firm. It'snot the norm to not pay for holidays, or the week over Xmas, but some are going that way. Employers definitely don't do what's best for the employee, but what's best for the employer.

14 days?! That’s awful!

There always seem to lots of American tourists in the UK / Europe. How do they get the time to take big trips like that?

It’s not linked to state. Your employer decides leave. Typically better paid or educated employees get more leave. It’s part of your benefits package.

I’ve had 20 days + 10 bank holidays + an assortment of various random leave for special circumstances since I was about 25 years old.

special circumstances are things like jury duty, child illness, moving, household disaster. My company has more categories than I can keep track of. If I have to take an unexpected day off for a life issue, it’s always worth checking to see if I can bill it to one of those categories.

i also have complete control over my schedule, so I don’t often have to take leave for partial days. I can just make up the hours on another day during the week and no one cares.

Varies a lot, we got 25 days plus 8 bank holidays then closure days on top (between Christmas and new year, Wednesday and Friday of thanksgiving week and Good Friday and Easter Monday (not public holidays in us) but it was academia

I go on a yoga retreat every year. There are always some Americans on it. They work between the yoga classes. So they are taking time off but still working many hours a day.
. They work for one of the states.

Thanks for answering my questions guys.

How is a "Personal" day different to Annual leave?

I usually get one 2 week trip long haul and one 1 week trip more local but I make sure I use one of the bank holidays to get an extra day as that would be 15 days and I only had 14 - this is my first year on 17 days! It’s amazing what you can get used to - my DH tends to do things with the kids that might need extra days as he knows I don’t have any extra
most Americans think a 2 week trip is a long trip so that’s using 10 of your days - I suppose that’s how they mange it 🤷🏻‍♀️

It varies wildly, but it helps to realize that Americans don’t really think about annual leave in the same way as Brits. Leave might be PTO (paid time off), personal days, floating holidays, or other random days off. In many places you also get a set number of sick days which roll over, so if you stay somewhere a long time you might end up with over 100 days to take off, that the company has to pay out to you if you leave.

This is one of the reasons many companies are switching to unlimited PTO. Mine has been considering it.

The job I recently applied for had 25 days PTO, 10 personal days, Fridays off in summer, short hour Fridays the rest of the year, some sick days (I don’t remember how many), and all the public holidays.

There’s FMLA at a federal level, which is unpaid, but often better leave at a state level. In some states they have paid sick leave, paid family leave, and other random leave. There’s also military family leave, caregivers leave…

If you are sick you start on sick days which tide you over on full pay but then potentially you go into Short Term Disability then Long Term Disability, which are both paid out of insurance policies they might or might not be provided through your employer.

You really can’t just compare US leave policies to UK policies. It’s not apples to apples.

(Can you tell I work in HR?)

If I was staff, 4 weeks plus a week of sick leave. Plus about 7 bank holidays. But as I’m an hourly worker, as much as I want with no pay. It works for me for now.

my company is Canadian so has slightly better conditions and is also a professional service company.

my neighbour works for a French company and not sure on vacation but, she got proper maternity leave and until the kid turned 5 they gave her an extra week a year of leave.

Texas here

That sounds amazing!

I had an American boss in Australia for a bit and I took 6 weeks off. He told me that wouldn’t fly in the US as they’d figure if you could be away that long they didn’t need you 😂 I guess he had a point.

As previous posters have said, it varies by sector not by state. I presently get 30 days annual leave plus 11 federal holidays. In addition, my employer gives us the day after Thanksgiving.

In my employment, annual leave increases according to how many years you have been there, not your position. I have been there 20 years.

My husband had 45 days annual leave in his employment by the time that he retired.

Both of us were expected, and even encouraged to take leave. In DH's employment in the financial sector, it is actually often required as an anti-fraud measure.

I forgot. We also have two floating holidays. So 13 in addition to PTO (paid time off). Also as a previous poster noted, my employer does not differentiate between sick leave and annual leave. It's all PTO.

Echoing what everyone else is saying about all the different forms of time off. My company gives everyone two days at Thanksgiving and December 24-26 off for Christmas, plus all the government (bank) holidays. Then we have PTO, flex time, sick leave that can be converted if unused, early Fridays… all sorts of stuff. They also don’t care if you come in late and leave early as long as you get shit done.

You can also negotiate your time off along with your salary as part of the hiring process. I tell them that as a Brit I am used to having more time off and they always come back with a generous PTO offer.

Massive variation. It often goes up with experience. My DH has 6 weeks leave now (combined PTO) and as he never gets sick he builds up a bank. His company limits how much he can carry over each year so he winds up taking a random week off to use it up.

The big issue is a company's attitude to taking it. There are firms where employees have fantastic leave on paper but it's not done to take it, at least not much at a time. It can be frowned on to take 2 weeks at once. It's bad in finance and in parts of tech.

Also, the averages hide a large difference between workers. White collar workers at larger companies get better leave than non-union hourly employees who may have no paid leave at all.

I’m a Brit currently living in the US and as previous posters have said it’s more dependant on the company than by state.

My DH is military, so his leave allowance looks a lot like the legal entitlement in the U.K. - they also have a weird system for carrying over days and how their systems logs days entered as leave. So depending on what days you choose to take, where they fall in the week, sometimes where they fall in the month, you actually end up getting extra days that don’t come out of your leave allowance 🤷🏻‍♀️🫠😂 And as for carrying days over to the following year, it’s got a total mind of its own. My DH hasn’t taken much leave this year, so is currently sat with 50-something days in the bank, 20-something of which can be carried over to next year if he doesn’t use them this year. That huge amount of leave will come in really handy when we do yet another overseas move later this year!
He also gets all federal holidays off which results in a few four-day weekends over the course of the year. It’s even better when we are stationed in the U.K. because then he gets US federal holidays AND UK bank holidays!

My employer also has limitations on how much leave can be carried over, but they are pretty generous about waiving that rule. That is really important for women of childbearing age who will often bank PTO to extend maternity leave.

It depends on who you work for, not what state you live in.