The Labor Day weekend is a good time to look at how much Americans are laboring vs how much they are vacationing.
According to a new report in the Washington Post, while employers are offering vacation to 90 percent of full-time workers and 40 percent of part-time workers, most American workers don’t use all their vacation.
Americans left 768 million days of paid time off unused last year. That's according to research released by the U.S. Travel Association. The study discovered that 55 percent of Americans did not use all of their paid vacation time.
And when Americans get paid time off, they don’t use it all. And when they do take vacation time, many don’t leave their work behind, with 70 percent admitting that they check in….with where they work at least occasionally during their vacation.
And another study found that more than half of American workers ― 54 percent — also admitting to feeling guilty about taking vacation time, sometimes, often or always.
And that may not be all that new. There was a prophetic book written some 40 years ago entitled “When I Relax I Feel Guilty”.
Maybe it’s time for a lot of us to take some vacation time…to read it.
(Photo of Coronado beach, C.E. Albert KOGO News)