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The Higher Your Salary, the More Time Your Employer Will Pay You Not To Work (qz.com)
The best-paid workers in the US not only make more money than many of their colleagues, they also tend to get more paid vacation days. An anonymous reader shares a report: An annual survey of of employee benefits conducted by the US government shows that, in 2017, nearly half of the people in the top 25% of earners received at least 10 days of paid vacation. The bottom 25% was not so lucky -- only around a tenth of them received such generous leave. Paid vacation time is often overlooked in measures of pay inequality in the US, because the value of time off does not appear in the household income statistics.
In other words, the more you are a value to a company the more they will pay you in salary and benefits.
Vacation leave is nothing more than additional pay and in most companies is negotiable.
If you are working as a burger flipper your salary is not that high and the extra benefits are the same.
Here in Europe we get 120 paid days off per year! What a country!
10 days is considered generous? That seems pretty low to me, and I'm sure it's considered uncivilized by most other modern countries.
Also, first ever first post?
So why is it surprising? It seems like basic economics to me. People with more in-demand and marketable skills can obtain both a higher salary and more benefits.
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Good jobs have good benefits.
I'm in Canada and I get 365 days off per year!
Oh wait, I'm homeless...
#DeleteFacebook
I work very little since becoming an officer.
The rest of ya, get your lazy humps to work!
10 vacation days is not a lot.
The work/life balance in the US is horrible. The typical 9-to-5 doesn't exist-it's closer to an 8-to-7 schedule if you're salaried.
The number of vacation days you receive often increases with your number of years at a company, as, often, does your pay. New(er), perhaps younger, employees often start out with lower salary and fewer vacation days. How is this a revelation? In addition, people higher up the salary scale may have more experience, perhaps from somewhere else, and negotiated more vacation days during the hiring and/or annual review process. Less experienced employees don't have that leverage.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Better job gets more benefits.
I've never had a job that offered vacation days. The woes of being a IT contractor, never hired, always used awhile and thrown away
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Once you can pay for a reasonable living, time off lets you live your life.
Departments are usually more ok with increasing it over salary, as it doesn't change how much is charged to their section.
And when it the cost cutters are looking for employees to axe, the high salary guy usually gets picked before the extra vacation guy
Military Leave is good
I would dare say that in that bottom 25% are also where the part timers are. Part timers don't get vacation, traditionally.
Next group in there is going to be low wage factory/retail/service workers.
The highest paid "workers" are generally those with "relationships" and other "business skills" that bring much more to the table than day after day productivity.
It's almost as if employees are being offered pay and benefits that are directly proportional to the value they bring to the company. Huh. Whoulda thunk
Just because you get more time, does not mean you can take it. I was given unlimited vacation time in my senior management role, but that does not equate to taking 2 months off and enjoy boat drinks.
It's almost like vacation and other benefits are part of the salary negotiation. Once your basic needs are covered you can divert more of your compensation in to these instead of base pay.
I am a bit concerned that someone is just figuring this out now.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
For those higher paid employees, an equally interesting question is how many days of vacation do they actually use?
It's almost like benefits and salary are both part of the compensation an employer gives you in exchange for your labor, and so more valuable (to the employer) or lower supply labor ends up getting higher benefits and salary than less valuable/higher supply labor.
So I feel like this doesn't take into account fulltime vs part time either. In general in the US, part time workers get very little paid time off. This is largely because some can flex their scheduling to take time off (albeit unpaid).
I'm sorry, did you refer to 10 days of vacation as "generous leave"? I wouldn't even consider a job that didn't have at least 4 weeks of vacation.
In other news, the sky is blue (when not obscured by clouds).
Seriously, people who are getting paid a lot have managed to convince somebody they deserve rewards. Paid vacation days are a reward. If somebody has managed to get their boss to pay them a high salary, wouldn't they also ask for good vacation days?
Of course, I'm not an American.... but being neighbours, I didn't realize that our labour laws were actually *THAT* different in this regard (I knew about some differences, of course. but I didn't think they were different about vacation time).
Here in Canada, employees are entitled to a paid stat holiday, regardless of whether you are scheduled to work that day or not, if you have been employed for more than 30 days, and have worked at least 15 of the last 30 days. If you are not scheduled to work on a stat for which you will be paid, then you are entitled to an average day's pay for the stat, and if you work on that day, you are entitled to time and a half for the hours worked PLUS an average day's pay. There are 6 nation-wide stat holidays in Canada per year, and most provinces have their own stat holidays in addition to these, bringing the total to around 10 stat holidays per year for any employee.
Employees who have been with a company for more than one full year are also entitled to 10 additional paid time off days per year, although the employer has freedom to dictate when some or all of those days are, or to choose to offer the employee payment in lieu of those days. An employer is not obligated to pay an employee for unused vacation days unless the employer restricted the employee from taking a vacation. Some employers allow employees to accrue unused vacation days for several years, although this varies from employer to employer, and the law is neutral on this point. After 5 years with a company, the number of vacation days per year increases to 15. These are the legal minimums... employers are at their discretion to offer more if they choose.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Get an education and earn experiences that companies will value. If you are valued then you will be compensate monetarily as well as in perks like additional time off.
If you are not valued, then you'll be treated like a cog in the system and discarded as soon as a cheaper, younger cog is available.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
In actual fact, high income earners tend to work substantially more than low income earners, so the fact that that they nominally more vacations hardly matters. People working around 60h/week make a median of $63000, whereas pepole working 40h/week make a median of $38000. A week or two of extra paid vacation isn't even a blip compared to 20h/week differences in work.
There are 52 weeks in a year. 10 days is two weeks. That is only 4%... the difference between making $100,000 a year and $104,000.
NO WAI, thanks for the insight.
Unionize!
I'm not trying to make any of you feel bad about your life choices, but I worked my entire adult life getting three months' vacation every year, plus a week for Spring Break and a week over the holidays.
As others here have said, you get paid what you're worth, I guess.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Higher salaried personnel also tend to work above the normal 80-hour biweekly standard on which their salary is based, so it's no surprise they also might get more vacation time to compensate.
10 days paid vacation?! In Sweden (and Im sure its pretty much the same in the other Nordic countries) weve had 15 days since 1951, and 25 days since 1978. Minimum. Ive got 35 days as a regular networking guy, and all overtime is paid, either in time (2 hours for every hour worked) or money, I get to choose
'Nearly half' of the top earners get 10 or more days of vacation, meaning that more than half of them get less than 2 weeks a year off - and it's much worse for low earners.
That's pretty darn embarrassing for a first world county: in Europe even a minimum wage McDonald's drive through worker can expect around 5 weeks of paid vacation in his first year of employment, plus a dozen or so days for national holidays.
I'm making over $90k working 36.25 hrs a week.. 3 weeks vacation to start, (4 after 5 years) when I worked longer hours I was making 30k les. (so your 60 hrs 60k seems to fit) but if you find a good employer, you can get paid well and have a good life.
This required a study?
Not the exception. Who wrote this fucking article.
Here is Europe the legal minimum number of days of for anyone is 20 days. Plus national holidays.
I really can't understand how you can think 10 days is a lot. I get 9 days a year just as national holidays
You guys are screwed over!
In Soviet Union there ware no difference in pay for Women and Men. There ware categories of specialists and fixed pay for every category. All employees of the same type had the same paycheck.
The general difference between categories was also interesting.
The engineer started as grade I and the start salary was 120 RUR per month after taxes (taxes ware approximately 90-95%) the maximum grade was 3 and compensation was 300 RUR per month.
The regular factory worker in position of mechanic had the same grades I, II, II and started from 60 RUR up to 120 RUR
Where is the trick? The trick was that mechanic's grades ware growing up to grade 25 and salary up to 600-700 RUR. So highly proficient worker was more precious than engineer with university degree.
So what I want to say that Salary Scale was from 60 up to 600 for regular single individual contributes in USSR. It was total soviet equalization by gender, age and etc.
Now coming back to North America, engineering salaries here starts from 55K up to 150K, see glass door if I am wrong, so my question is! Who is more Sovietic USSR with 10x salary scale or USA with 3x salary scale? I don't account for progressive tax scale at all.
Somebody had to do a survey to discover this?
Here we have close to 30 days by law.
Most people have 32 to 35 days.
I personally would not go below 90 days ... but that is not fully vacation, half of it is sports the majourity of the rest is studying new stuff, mostly project related.
The USA is a place completely out of question for working as a European (unless you want to do rocket science, work for Intel or Apple etc.)
I can not "relax" at a wok place, even if we would run on "low demand", and I should be present, I would always be kind of "high alert". Other people just sit at their workplace and are half asleep, nothing for me.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yeah this isn't exactly a big surprise when you give the topic a few seconds of thought. To incentivize employee retention, companies often raise paid vacation time. My previous employer raised paid vacation time to 3 weeks after 5 years, 4 weeks after 12 years, and 5 weeks after 18 years. During that time, pay increased at about 3% annually. So more senior employees get higher wages and increased paid vacation time. No big surprise there.
The problem for employees is that "paid vacation" is really something of a fraud. It's baked into your salary and you're just claiming the amount you're due when you request time off. Don't believe me? Try asking your boss for unpaid time off and see how far you'll get. "Paid vacation" is really just another shackle employers use to keep you on the job. But if workers can have an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) that's independent of employers, why couldn't they also have a vacation account that's also independent? I've been a dividend investor for nearly 10 years and my dividend income could, in theory, buy my vacation time (I say "in theory" because in practice, my employer limited vacation time to one's allotted paid vacation time. No unpaid vacation time!). When limited to 4 weeks' paid vacation and capable of buying 8 weeks of time, I began to see "paid vacation" for the bullshit it truly is. If paid vacations were eliminated, employees could invest money into their own vacation fund and have true paid vacations. The only flaw I see with this idea is that younger workers would only afford very very little vacation time and older workers would have a boatload of accrued vacation time.
The way I understand it, generally people with more seniority are paid more. They also have more vacation days.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
One of my past employers paid me a huge sum just to go away and never come back.
Unfortunately (for them) the state department of labor and industries still found me and I filled them in on the working conditions there.
Have gnu, will travel.
I would quit my job if my company only gave me 10 days of paid vacation.
What a ridiculous comparison. Most long-term employees will naturally be paid more and have higher vacation amounts.
WTF? My first job in the US after school, I had 15 days a year. Granted, I was a developer, so not the lowest-end job, and it was sick+vacation days together, but still... Now I am in the UK as a senior developer and I get 26 days a year just for vacation (sick is separate), while the minimum for non-developers is 24 days/year.
I've never heard anyone getting 10 days or less per year...
Fresh out of college and got into Govt Service as a Gazetted Officer (civilian equivalent of a Commissioned Officer, your name gets published in the Gazette, the official publication of Government of India). I got 30 days of "Earned Leave", and then 30 days of half pay medical leave, convertible to 15 days of full pay leave, 2 days of casual leave, 16 national holidays, two days of "restricted holidays". 65 days off! not counting 104 weekend.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Dire Straits knew how to do this decades ago.
Wow. My company gives everyone the same 10 days off every year (typically things like MLK day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. +1 day of the employees choice). Plus employees get another day of vacation every pay period, so that is an additional 26 vacation days a year. Vacation rolls over from year to year. Plus employees get a 6 week sabbatical every 5 years. Right now I could take 3 months of paid vacation off if I wanted. But, I love my job and don't really have any incentive to take time off. I actually regret the weekend.
Wow, will the generosity of US employers never end?
That teachers were in the top wage earners at over 80 paid days off a year ... ... ... by the hour, once you move to a salaried position vacation gets factored into that pay.
Oh wait
In all the tech companies I have interviewed for they offered 15 paid days a year minimum.
In the various retail jobs I worked at they had maybe 5
Mostly it comes down to, when you work by the hour, companies can pay you
I get a salary. traditionally the distinction between wages and salary work is that in salary work you are paid to get an ever evolving job done on time, and wages is by the hour not the deadline. THat's why salaried workers don't get overtime. While I do fill out a time card it's not how my performance is judged.
So technically, I have as much time off as I want as long as I meet expectations. But of course meeting expectations requires me to show up for work when everyone else is there too, so hours do matter.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Has nobody considered that the bottom 25% are likely part time or temporary workers?
The only people surprised by your shitty workers rights are morans. You guys fucking suck.
So this "study" found that well-paid employees have better benefits than those at low-paying jobs? Mon Dieu! how can this be?
Next you "find" that 401K and pension plans are reserved for top earners, while minimum wage earners are left with no mechanism other than self-directed savings...
Thank you captain obvious, it never would have occurred to me that people with more valuable skills, people that demand higher salaries, get more vacation days than those without valuable skill and that receive lower wages.
Ken
God bless the IBEW. We get 25 vacation days, 11 holidays, 4 personal days and 10 sick days per year.
Is it shocking to anyone that the members of our working society that have the lowest wages also have the lowest benefits?
Forget vacation, these are the same folks taking no pay for days they are sick or need to care for sick dependents.
It is systemic and institutional poverty, it keeps the lowest members at the bottom and enables the top members to remain there without doing much.
Typically for the first 5 years its 2 weeks then 3 till 10 years, 4 till 20 and 5 if over 30 years. So since longevity at work also influences salary, the result is completly expected. (Note that this is for large companies)
I've always started a job with two weeks vacation and I['m neither in the top, nor bottom 25%.
My first real employment gave 10 days, rising to 15 days after a few years of tenure, which was the same package my wife had for her first few fulltime jobs. Then I got a job at a place which STARTED at 15 days, and built to 25 days, and I realized - 10 days of vacation isn't some blessing for top performers, it's a sign of how broken American employment is. With only 10 days it becomes really challenging to cover your various life events (sibling's graduation, niece's wedding, etc) and also take any sort of worthwhile vacation. So you end up spending it in dribs and drabs, maybe with a one-week block somewhere, or you don't take minimal vacation for a few years to bank time for something longer in the future.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people should just be slackers. But 10 days per year is unhealthy.
[And I realize that this is #firstworldproblem, given the many people who completely lack control over their working time and have effectively zero vacation days, which is also completely broken of us as a society.]
That's why when people joke "Canada has two seasons, Winter and Summer." It isn't a joke, it's been 8 months of straight winter.
You clearly don't get it. The reason it's a joke is that really there is only one season. We had a _high_ of -11C the other day which is not bad given it's about the 109th January today.
I however didn't jump on the first opportunity out of college. When I didn't get what I demanded with one offer and I didn't feel like getting screwed around with any longer during interviews I went it alone. I originally got offered a decent salary for a kid out of school, but I knew I was worth more so I demanded a bit more, and slightly beyond what was reasonable. Didn't work, but no big deal, and one of the best decisions of my life. After doing multiple interviews with one more company and being dicked around with I said fuck it (4 interviews with ONE BIG company only to find out that the final decision maker really had a person they were going to hire and were just following BS corporate procedures, so many hours of my time were wasted, wish I could have charged em for that).
I wasn't lazy or self-entitled. I instead took a part time job (of my own choosing, I told them 30 hours max) near minimum wage ($9 in 2008) and simply spent another 30 hours or so building up two business. One that I knew I could get off the ground within months and another that I figured would take a few years. You got to have the money to pull off a startup and so I did the rational thing.
It's 10 years in now and I'm well off compared to pretty much every other human being around me- with one or two exceptions- people who did similarly. However I didn't stick to living in the most expensive part of the country- and neither did my well-off friends. I shut one of my businesses down that was local-focused and profitable and moved the other even more profitable business to New Hampshire- because taxes are low- costs of living are low- and even more importantly because I believe in freedom and the Free State Project- the migration of freedom minded people to NH- (and my employees get paid decently too relative to what the jobs require anyway- not that it matters-because here cost of living is so low someone near even if not at minimum wage can afford to buy a house still)- and I can afford to take off as much time as I want and I still get paid. Business doesn't stop when I take a vacation. And I take full advantage of that to travel and enjoy life.
It's possible to make six figures in New Hampshire working for someone else and we actually have a lot of people moving from the silicon valley area and actually all over the US and world even. This is mostly due to the Free State Project though and its amazing the difference between how well people are doing after they've moved from a place like Silicon Valley or New York City / New Jersey metro / Boston region and now. A bunch of people I know literally own mansions. They just don't know what to do with there wealth and have to make decisions like- buy the biggest camp ground in New Hampshire or buy a mansion- or maybe even both really. They have a lot more money here and they have to find different ways to invest it. People living in small one or two bedroom apartments making six figures now owning mansions. Who would have thought smarter decisions result in more off time and a better standard of living!
... you're most likely putting in extra time throughout the year compared to hourly staff who punch out and leave work behind.
Vacation is just one category of time off. To be useful, all categories need to be listed, vacation, sick time, personal days, and weekends. Some people barely get any of those days off.
There are lots of CEO's getting all kinds of compensation, who end up bankrupting a company. Some smuck mopping floors is much better that a CEO drives a company into the ground. This is the problem way modern USAian capitalism works. The best do not rise to the absolute top. Instead the most connected politically rise to the top of a corporate social club.
Why is it that Lenova can take over the Think Pad line and suddenly start turning profit. Is it because China has better engineers and office staff ? No it is because they have better corporate officers, who can look at something other than share holder value when building a company. Yet the corporate types are getting vacation while they are taking away the vacation of the Janitors.
Most Europeans are poor even where they get more days (and this isn't even always true). More of the money Europeans make is stolen from them by government. I know because I have businesses in both Europe and the United States. They pay more for goods and pretend like they are wealthy. I'm sorry- but if your living in an 10x10 room your not wealthy. If you can't afford to travel the world your not wealthy. If your dependent on government for educating your children your not wealthy. If your dependent on government for babysitting your not wealthy. The same thing applies to people in New York/New Jersey metro area, California, Boston, etc. where socialism is rampant and well educated "upper" "middle" class really means impoverished. People of means can afford things like cars and houses and travel.
"An annual survey of of employee benefits conducted by the US government shows that, in 2017, nearly half of the people in the top 25% of earners received at least 10 days of paid vacation."
Seriously? Your country is very broken.
I've just had to go look up my contract for my workplace, a place which is considered very harsh on time off, driving for results, after-hours working and getting every drop out of employees, even on weekends if they can convince people to come in.
Six weeks, guys. That's 30 working days.
When a company is paying an employee at higher rates it is because that employee makes more money for the company. The higher paid employee surely has a higher skill set and is in more demand by all similar companies. Hence, the company is willing to provide more benefits to obtain and and retain that valuable employee. Lower paid employees are much easier to find due to a lower skill set. Why would a company give more benefits to an employee that does not have a high value to a company? Big surprise....
Jesus H Christ America! We may have shitty dental care but even our temps have about 20 days paid holiday.
One more of those theories not based on facts.
They get better 'contracts' because they are better employees, very especialized (means they have at least estudied more than the average) and they indeed have higher leves of stress. Also seems that those special employes have a higher production than the average.
The higher ups have sex with each other and are rarely in the office.
So, PTO... nifty terminology. What is it with people insisting that everyone thinks they're some sort of a root vegetable? First you try to explain to me that you're a potato and then you refer to taking time off as something that's associated to PoTatOs? Just teasing, I actually think of PTO as being PTSD from being worked to the point of snapping. I would like to recommend GTC as a description of what you would send me e-mails about when I try to contact you and you've "Gone To the Can". Or maybe GBH for "Giving Boss Head" to let us know you're asking for a raise.
Of course the entire American culture is corrupted. I hear kids yelling "Momma, let's get these. There's a BOGO" in the grocery stores.
It really doesn't matter how absolutely stupid these things make people sound, they'll use those terms anyway.
Yep... so 5 weeks paid vacation a year here. And once a year, your employer has to pay you 10.2-12% of your entire previous year's salary with a major tax break instead of your normal salary to make sure you have money to travel and have fun. This is whether you're a burger flipper or a doctor or a billionaire. Everyone gets 5 weeks paid vacation.
Then there's 10 paid sick days by default.
Then there's 10 additional paid sick days in case you need to stay home with your kids.
Then there's Christmas week, Easter week, lots and lots of long weekends.
Altogether, it's nearly 20% of the year you're paid to not work... as a rule in Norway.
I haven't come close to using all my days except for a year when I had the worst boss EVER.
For all of those who have read this. I want you to know that because of the way you treat your poor, while not official, it has become common in Europe to refer to the U.S. as a third world country. Only a third world country would exploit their weak instead of developing them into real assets. Only a third word country would punish their people for getting sick instead of investing in making them well and able to contribute again.
BTW... I am an American, I just left before I was old enough to see how bad it really is. And I have traveled to far less developed countries than the U.S. and they would never let their people live the way America does... and even worse, only a third world country would elect a casino owner as their leader.
In Denmark everybody has at least 5 weeks paid leave annually (except the first year of your first job), and many have six or even seven weeks - excluding bank holidays.
Work time is usually 37 hours per week.
And some gets paid when having lunch also.
When you become a parent, the parents get a year off to be shared between them, but you get paid a lower salary during this time.
So like somebody else said, spend time with your family, not work.
Duh.
You're welcome.
Did we really need a study for this insight?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
List of minimum annual leave by country (wikipedia)
Here in Europe most workers get 20-25 days of paid vacation per year, as mandated by each countries' law.
Water is wet. News at 11
Is that total 10 days? If so that is bleak, we get 30!
In the U.K. I started on 20 days' leave, after five years it went up to 25, then I got an extra day for each further year I stayed with the company until I got 30 days' leave a year, and I've had that for the past 20 years. You Americans are crazy, putting up with such nonsense. How much leave do the lower paid workers get? None?
They complain how many more hours they work still, yet according to you, this is their choice, so why do you let them whine about it and feel sympathy? Why do you let them say they get paid less because they do more hours when they apparently want to? And why the jezus fuck are companies offering more days off if the days off are going to make the employee have to stay behind and do unpaid overtime? Just cut the number of days off, FFS! Do 60 hours a day over 160 days instead of 80 hours a day over 120. Not fucking rocket science!
And as that maths demonstrates, their complaint that they aren't being paid THAT much more "because I work later" is not true: they work later for fewer days. Zero difference, therefore zero excuse.
Getting paid by the gov't, again.
Companies pay more in salary and benefits to the employees they value more. That is such ground-breaking research.
Phew, you guys really are the smartest of the smartest. Now, go chug down some 'raw' water and launch your new cryptocurrency, DoucheCoin.
~160k
13 days sick (carries over)
19.5 or 20 pto depends on who runs the white house (carries over)
Forced to work 10 holidays at double time.
I'm grateful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
Come to Brazil: my salary is bigger than 80% of the people in this country (considered a Medium salary here, since I am not rich). But, I get 30 days of paid vacation days per year, PLUS 33% of my salary as a bonus to go on vacation. I usually split my vacation into two waves of 15 days per year. Cheers!