Whether by choice, design or herd instinct, Americans are far behind the rest of the world in annual vacation days. Italy leads the world with 42 days a year. France has 37, Germany 35, Brazil 34, Britain 28, Canada 26, and South Korea and Japan 25. The U.S. comes in at a paltry 13, according to the World Tourism Organization. But vacation days only tell part of the story.

Commute hours aside, Americans, particularly those with college degrees who earn high incomes, are working longer hours. The government Current Population Study (CPS) reveals that the proportion of Americans who work more than 50 hours per week increased since 1970 and the annual hours worked by all employees increased 142 hours since 1973. The National Survey of the Changing Workforce finds that in 1997, Americans worked 3.5 hours a week more than they did 20 years ago. Meanwhile other leading industrial countries are cutting their workweek: People in European countries typically work 32- to 36-hours a week.

That we are working longer and harder comes as no surprise, but what we're doing to ourselves? Ten-hour workdays were routine ten years. Today increasing numbers of people work 12- to 14-hour days, some six days a week. Add to this commute hours that increased drastically in the past ten years. Higher paid workers in Silicon Valley may feel it's worthwhile, especially for the executives of the Valley's largest 150 companies who took in an average of almost $60 million last year.

These higher paid workers follow the "high commitment" work model, which corporations find a godsend. Such employees place "excellence" in work at the center of their lives. Meetings begin before 8 AM and last until after 5 PM. Travel and education demands require them to be away from home. Punishing schedules to meet deadlines become routine. They skip lunch, take work home and skip vacations-the Oxford Health Plans Inc. study found one fourth of all employees don't take all of their vacation time. Managers encourage and pressure employees by modeling "high commitment" behavior: They frequently come in early, stay late, work weekends and skip vacations.

Workers at the other end of the spectrum work just as hard, but with fewer vacations and less pay. A study by the Harvard School of Public Health found that working Americans lack vacation time and sick leave. They can't even take time off when family members need care. Some 63 percent of the working poor lacked paid vacations during part of the previous 7 years and 28 percent of the working poor have never had paid vacations. On the pay front, the working poor are even worse off: While the income of the wealthiest 1 percent grew 157 percent from 1979 to 1997, the lowest-earning 20 percent of Americans saw their income drop from $10,900 to $10,800.

Experts claim that Americans have to work harder and forego vacations because we are transitioning from a manufacturing to a service economy that requires attention 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Additionally, a booming economy and low unemployment force people to work longer and harder. Global competition, which brought major upheavals in how U.S. companies operate, places new demands on our workforce.

Despite these arguments, other countries are going through the same economic changes and still take time off. What happened to the vacation in America?

Cindy Aron, author of Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the U.S., claims that Americans have always valued discipline, sobriety and industry and have a love-hate relationship with vacations. The hate goes back to our puritanical disdain of idleness and leisure. Not only do we take few days off, but we are also driven to accomplish something during our vacations: We must learn, improve ourselves or accomplish a goal. And we must stay in touch with work, even when we are away. Capitalism could be another reason: Americans don't enjoy vacations as a right but as a privilege granted by their employers.

While people in the rest of the world shake their head in wonder at the paltry amount of time we take-off from work, many of us will soon be loading the family into the car and heading to our favorite vacation spot for a few days. Maybe it's a good thing that the slowing economy is demanding that we take time off. It could be good for us.

Copyright 2001 Don Monkerud

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