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.

Things in the US are priced based on this vacation model - Americans are happy to spend big on their few days off.

The American tourists you see in Europe are not getting the bare minimum of time off. They're people who are either students or people who have been in their jobs long enough to earn a lot of time off (and the salaries to pay for a trip to Europe).

When I lived there, working in a job straight after college, with paid time off and other holidays I ended up with about 25 days off. Most of my friends who still live there end up with between 25 and 35 days off, some gets more. It depends on the company and your position. It’s often more flexible than the UK and there is a lot of people who just repeat that Americans don’t get much annual leave without actually knowing anything about it as they seem to like being negative about the US, especially on here.

there's plenty of retirees, students, and well paid people. Travelling to Europe is as much about money as time off.

also, if you are a family with children, American school holidays are tricky. The total number of days is almost as high as England, but almost all the holiday is the summer, 10-11 weeks. There's a week or so at Christmas and another week in spring. In parts of the northeast they get a week in February. There's several long weekends like for thanksgiving, but that's it. We refuse to travel Christmas week as it's miserable, so if we want to go anywhere, we have to do it June - August. That's a problem for travel.

My friend in the us had to go back to work 2 weeks after giving birth

I was wondering why people want to move to the US for work....

You get paid so much more and pay so much less tax

It depends on the job, your seniority and how long you've been there. Many entry level jobs start with two weeks, plus holidays (they don't call them bank holidays, like we do, but you get quite a few in the US), and if they're professional jobs then you accrue holiday the longer you're there. So after a few years, particularly if you stay with the same company, you can be on four weeks plus bank holidays, which is the same as here for many jobs. Some bosses are open to negotiation too. I negotiated a very generous vacation package when I was working there, the best I've ever had actually.

That's an important point about negotiation. It's quite possible, for example, to be able to negotiate a higher accrual rate for PTO.

It’s been some time but I got two weeks a year. And I had to work to earn it.

My best friend’s dh works in California. He gets unlimited vacation days. He is very high up though and the reality is he takes one week in July, 4 days at Thanksgiving to visit his parents in another state, and a couple days at Christmas.

One reason that some people don't take all of the leave they are entitled to is that, depending on the employer's policies, they can get paid for leave accrued but not taken when they leave. And as DH and I have gotten older, we both banked some in case of medical issues that might arise, which was a good thing for me when I had to have major surgery several years ago.

Some of the responses and assumptions about US time off depend on public vs private sector, area of the country you live in, etc. I had children around 1990 and was allowed 12-16 weeks off. The majority of places maternity leave is unpaid, so that has a big impact on how much leave you take. I had 5 weeks annual leave after 10 years. This was on top of approximately 8 paid holidays (private firm), and 10 days sick leave. This eventually changed to PTO (paid time off) of 6 weeks, and paid holidays. Salaries in the US are generally higher than the UK. I was making about $38,000 in 1998 in an administrative role, and $75,000+ before recently retiring. Our taxes are lower too from what I understand. There's positives and negatives wherever you live.