2080 hours per year! That's 52 weeks of 40 hours per week. It's also inhuman.
Here in Norway we have five weeks of holiday plus various public holidays and only 37.5 hours per week adding up to about 1700 hours per year.
2080 hours per year! That's 52 weeks of 40 hours per week. It's also inhuman.
Here in Norway we have five weeks of holiday plus various public holidays and only 37.5 hours per week adding up to about 1700 hours per year.
Urban workers in China do 3,744 hours per year; farmers do 2400 hours
Norwegian workers do 1,418 hours per year, one of the lowest in the world
> Urban workers in China do 3,744 hours per year
For reference, that's 10:15 per day, 365 days a year. Or 996 without vacations, if you intend to have one day off.
996 has never been a standard work duration for urban workers in China, aside from some tech companies that promoted performative work ethics. And even there, people do take vacations.
3744 hours. Dayum!
Just going off basic numbers:
- 3744/52/5 = 14.4 hour day if they work 5 days a week
- 3744/52/6 = 12 hrs if they work 6 days a week
- 3744/52/7 = 10.3 hrs if they work 7 days a week.
That is, indeed, what 9-9-6 means: 9am-9pm (12hrs) * 6 days per week.
9-9-6 is also not full productivity for 9-9-6.
Office workers will eat lunch, take a 1-2hr nap in the afternoon, and also eat dinner with their coworkers within the common 9-9-6 rhythm. It still takes a significant chunk of time, but the actual working time butt-in-chair is closer to 54 hours
You lose productivity doing 996 anyways so how can you maximize past that?
Yeah, oil nations are different. Norway's resources are well-managed, but oil nations with outsourced defence just have different constraints.
Every single nation on Earth has mandatory paid vacation, except for the United States and three tiny islands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_b....
Edit: And looking into it a little, I'm pretty sure two of those islands actually do have mandatory paid leave after a minimum period of employment.
I don't get what the big deal is about mandatory paid vacation. My view is that your total compensation will be set based on the market value of your labor. Some portion of that compensation is given to you in the form of ordinary wages and some portion in the form of paid vacations. If the government mandated paid vacations would it increase many people's total compensation?
In my European mind (I have 25 mandated days off per year), if there was not a mandatory paid vacation limit two things would happen:
1. Further exploit desperate people since those that don't need to work at any cost would steer clear of jobs that have 0 holidays. 2. You would further penalize people with families where both parents work. It is well understood that if your kid is sick you can't really use your sick days and so must use your PTO days. Having 0 available days doesn't play well with having kids (personal experience).
And finally, having mandated PTO allow you to actually take holidays. I heard too many times of companies that offer unlimited PTO and when the employer tries to take some they sabotage him/her or plainly threaten his/her job security.
The easiest answer is yes, since many Americans currently earn minimum wage with no paid vacation, minimum wage with mandatory vacation would be an increase in total compensation. I don't know how paid leave regulations impact wage growth in general, I'm sure there is research on this but I didn't immediately find anything.
Another way to think about it: why do we have building codes? We don't want to incentivize builders to cut corners that would risk an electrical fire or falling down in an earthquake or something in order to offer a cheaper price, so we make it illegal. If unsafe buildings are allowed, it makes it difficult for safe builders to stay in the market. Similarly, we don't want to incentivize workers to sell their labor with zero leave in order to offer a cheaper price, because that risks unhealthy and insular communities (literally unhealthy if people can't take sick leave), poor mental health, unhealthy childcare practices, an unhealthy civic environment if people can't take time off to vote or volunteer, etc. The labor market is competitive and people will sacrifice paid leave if they have to, because they need money to live, so we should make it illegal to remove the incentive.
Wages and time off are not frictionlessly interchangeable in the vast majority of jobs. Mandating minimum levels for both helps make sure people have access to both.
> total compensation will be set based on the market value of your labor.
No, you do not want that.
The market value of most people's labour is very close to zero.
Left to the market most of the population would live just below starvation, a very small group of owners would live very well, and a small group of artisans would do OK supporting the tiny group.
That is where many countries are heading
For a lot of us, work is not our life. Turns out that most people really want a paid vacation. Smart Capitalists know that it's easier to extract value from workers with higher morale.
If you would rather trade your paid vacation for an extra week of pay, I am sure you and your boss can work it out. Companies pay out unused vacation all the time. Just don't ruin it for the rest of us!
Unless you have a union, there's a dramatic power imbalance between you (the employee) and the employer at the negotiating table. I'd urge you to read up about the 19th century labor movement and what conditions prompted it.
Mandatory vacation, like education, mandatory IDs, and myriad other laws are the sole jurisdiction of the individual States to decide. There will never be a "US" law about these things. Most questions that start with "why is the US the only country..." can be explained by the fact that the States decide and the US government can't force the States to make laws.
Similarly, there is no US law against most crimes. It doesn't mean those laws don't exist in every State.
That said, there is no State with mandatory paid vacation either AFAIK.
Given the political diversity of the States, this suggests that mandatory paid vacation is either not considered an important issue by people across the political spectrum or there are existing regulations that would create real problems if there paid vacation was mandated without changing those regulations first.
There has been a federal law for mandatory family and medical leave for 30+ years (https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla). It is unpaid and doesn't cover all workers, but that's a legislative detail that could be changed. I don't see any legal or constitutional reason that unpaid leave can be federal but paid leave can't.
It would be interesting to know which percentage of full-time jobs in the USA get no paid vacation.
France is not an oil nation. We have 35h weeks and 5 weeks of paid vacation as well.
Edit: Also, the US is a damn oil nation. It has nothing to do with oil, and everything to do with politics.
Yes, and your government takes 57% of the total GDP to themselves, rely on an external power (that’s less and less friendly) for their protection and are on the track to their 6th prime minister in less than 2 years (is it 6th? I’ve lost track) because if they try to increase the retirement age above 62 (in their pay as you go unmaintanable system) people come down to the streets to burn down businesses and destroy public property.
> your government takes 57% of the total GDP to themselves
That's a lot of blackjack and hookers for the ministers, if you really believe that "the government" takes 57% of GDP for "themselves". No wonder we're at out 6th PM, they must fall like flies with the amount of drugs they have to snort in order to siphon this much money.
Spain and Portugal were in pretty much the same boat not too long ago and they've started to reform of their own accord. The French will come around once the bond vigilantes start taking a serious look at that whole government deficit+debt situation and unsustainable retirement ages. Of course it will be painful and involve severe austerity measures, but that's what it takes.
France has stuck is head in the sand regarding its future finances
So has the US, difference is the US citizens don't get anything good out of their debt.
> US citizens don't get anything good out of their debt
Partly because they're paying for drug innovation and defense for other countries.
As if the US hasn’t!
I’m not sure that’s the key factor. Resource wealth helps, but it doesn’t automatically translate into shorter workweeks or generous leave. Countries with far fewer natural resources—such as Germany, the Netherlands, or Denmark—still manage shorter working hours, strong labor protections, and substantial paid vacation.
Those outcomes depend much more on labor policy, bargaining power, and what governments choose to protect. In many places, business pressure and media framing make long hours seem unavoidable, even though they’re ultimately the result of policy choices.
> Countries with far fewer natural resources—such as Germany, the Netherlands
Where do you think the term "Dutch disease" came from?
In Germany its somewhere between 1600-1700 hours, and we don't have much oil
The other Nordic countries don't have oil riches and manages just fine.
I think they just do that to get to an hourly rate. It’s probably better to look at the annual income and think of that number regardless of how many hours you worked during the year.