Many Americans no longer even take two weeks. My husband works for a large company. He gets five paid leave days (calleed personal days) plus ten vacation days. Sick leave is separate and cannot be used as vacation the way it is at kevbo’s last job.
At the last big company I worked for, you had to work there ten years before getting three weeks of paid vacations.
Many Americans have a skewed idea of the value of vacation and do not even take what they are entitled to.
There are no standard times. While many people with families (children out of school) go during the summer months, when people go in vacation is totally individualized.
Here are some statistics on this:
“The United States is one of the only modern countries without vacation-time minimums mandated by law.
In many European countries workers get five weeks of vacation. Laws mandate a minimum of two weeks vacation in Canada and Japan.
Employees in European Union countries get four weeks of paid vacation by law, while many employees in the U.S. would need to work at a job more than a year before getting the conventional two weeks vacation, and the law does not mandate that.
For example, the London-based HSBC Group starts its England based employees out with 26 vacation days plus 8 public holidays each year. A U.S. employee in an American subsidiary would have to be on the job for 10 years at HSBC before getting that kind of time off.”