Dive Brief:
- Most workers take one vacation day at a time, according to data from the Deel HR platform analyzed with venture capital firm a16z. That’s followed by one-week breaks and two-week vacations, per the data, which skews toward startups, tech companies and remote-first firms.
- While workersNorway and the United Kingdom are more likely to use all of their vacation days, still only around half do so. The U.S., meanwhile, falls below 40%, the data showed.
- “North America clusters more stingily than Europe does, but there’s still a lot of variation within regions, particularly among people who claim 100% of the days off that they’re offered,” wrote Lauren Thomas, Deel’s founding economist, in a blog post.
Dive Insight:
Europeans may be the best at “vacationmaxxing,” led by France, where fixed-leave workers take an average of 28 days annually, per the data. In the U.S., that number falls to 16 days.
“Brazil breaks the trend” in how workers take vacation, Thomas wrote. “There’s a reason for this, it turns out! Brazil has some interesting laws about how employees take vacations.”
Ogletree Deakins breaks it down in a 2022 blog post: “Under Brazil’s 2017 labor reform, employees may use the vacation in three periods, but one of those periods must be at least 14 consecutive days in length and the other two must be at least five consecutive days each.”
In the U.S., nearly a quarter of workers took no vacation days in the past year, according to a report by FlexJobs published in October 2025.
Some companies try to incentivize employees to take time off by providing paid travel benefits, a career expert previously told HR Dive. Individuals need a break from work to avoid burnout and to stay engaged, the expert said.