How much time off does a job come with? Across 11,075 employers worldwide that state their annual leave, the typical (median) employer advertises up to 25 days, taking the most generous figure each states.
The league table
- Germany: up to 30 days
- United Kingdom: up to 27 days
- Ireland: up to 25 days
- Netherlands: up to 25 days
- India: up to 23 days
- United States: up to 15 days
- Canada: up to 15 days
Worldwide, 14.5% of employers that state their leave offer unlimited holiday or unlimited paid time off.
How we measured it
We read the annual leave, holiday, paid time off (PTO) and vacation employers state on their own careers sites worldwide, leaving out job boards and recruitment agencies; weeks count as five days. Where a page gives more than one figure, such as leave that rises with service, we take the highest. Whether public holidays are included varies by country and is rarely stated, and legal minimums differ: the United States has no national legal minimum of paid leave, while EU countries guarantee at least four weeks. An employer's country is given only where its pages clearly say where it is. The United Kingdom row comes from this worldwide sample; it is not the figure from our separate study of UK employers' own careers pages, which reads a different set of employers.
Holiday is the one benefit every employer offers, so it makes a fair international comparison — and the gaps between countries are large.
