Japanese take an average of 8 paid vacation days a year

Mainichi reports on a pretty depressing survey result:

According to the questionnaire conducted in Japan as well as in eight countries in Europe and North America, the Japanese only took an annual average of eight paid holidays — smaller than any other country questioned. France topped the list with 34 days, followed by Italy and Spain with 27 paid days off annually.

Among the reasons why Japanese employees can’t take paid holidays were, “Too busy with work” and “Their bosses and colleagues have yet to take their paid leave,” the survey found.

Eight days of paid vacation a year is:

21 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - September 4, 2008 at 5:08 pm

Categories: General Japan Tags: japan

GuyinJapan

34 paid vacation days???

Jeez, I only get 10 a year….
stereo

They should take the 15 national holidays and the long year-end holidays into account. 8 paid holidays + 15 national holidays + 4 yearend holidays make 27 days off, which is in par with Italy and Spain.

nevil

I hope the comparison made a distinction between national holidays and “paid vacation”.
The Overthinker

So France and Spain have no national holidays then?

And what about unpaid holiday time?
Andyroo

At many of the companies that I visit, they often work on the national holidays and usually only take time off for the New Year, Golden Week, and Obon.
http://jasoncollin.org Jason

Yeah, but can those people in Italy and Spain take all or most of those 34 days of in a row? That’s the real benefit. Japanese having 27 days off total has no meaning when they’d be lucky to have 7 of those in a row.

http://www.reallyjapan.com Ruben

I’m Italian, well, taking 34 days off in a row is pretty extreme even there.. but two weeks is ok.
Actually my company (Japanese) just reduced dayoff/year… to only 8 days!
So, I’m resigning this month, and I’m going to travel for at least 2 months soon..

stereo

How many national holidays are there in Italy or Spain?

I though the US has only about five national holidays.

Are there any country that has more than 15 national holidays?

nevil

How about sick leave in the US.
In Japan I think most common is to use your paid holiday as sick leave whereas in Finland and many other European countries you have special sick leave.

http://www.feitclub.com feitclub

Not everyone gets those holidays, you know. I think that’s part of the problem.
Tommy

Okey in France we have 1 1 days of national holidays, and we take 35 days of paid holidays a year .
So its a bit more than in japan

The Overthinker

Time to move to France, n’es pas?

sliders_alpha

“n’est ce pas?” =D

well, i’m french, and i still want to move to japan

The Overthinker

Is that the spelling? I could never spell French: refused to get involved with a language that insisted “Qu’est-ce que c’est” was the right way to spell “keskisay.” So I took Japanese instead….
ダビ

‘Cause Japanese writing is so much more phonetical… Or English for that matter http://www.economist.com/blogs/theinbox/2008/08/you_write_potato_i_write_ghoug.cfm

error on page

If you move to France you will probably end up unimployed living on welfare and start ritoing in the sub urbs. Well, could beat working as an Engrish teacher.

Out of the OECD countries. Finland has the most paid holidays. US is at the bottom of the list and Japan second to bottom.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/06/12/pf/vacation_days_worldwide/
http://whatjapanthinks.com Ken Y-N

When looking at holidays you have to compare service companies versus standard office workers. I as an office worker at one of Japan’s largest companies get 25 days paid holiday, how many ever public holidays there are, plus four special all-of-the-office holidays that get used to make four-day weekends and fill in days at Golden Week.

In other words, I can take two weeks to Europe off-season, get a week + 1 day at New Year, Golden Week and Obon, and I still have another 10 to 12 days left to take piecemeal.

Of course, most of the Japanese end up taking a number of 幽霊年休 towards the end of the year to burn holidays, when they float into the office at 10 am and leave at 5-ish.

And talking of holidays for service workers, many large estate agents/house builders have recently introduced compulsory shut downs at Obon for five or seven days, regardless of it being prime time for househunting and model room visiting.
http://investbysimplicity.wordpress.com Charles Martineau

They should take more vacation. Maybe Japan will become more productive again!

nevil

Definitely!
Just going to the same work place that you are tired of day in and day out without rest seriously harms productivity in my view.
With having 2-4 weeks off in the summer it becomes bearable.

(If you find your job interesting it is probably different matter. Still you can’t stay productive for long if you continue working that much)

http://www.kolalo.com/hotels/japan/ Yuki

That is too sad~~, i think we deserve much much more vacations, say, 30 days each year!
Josh

My last year on JET I had 32 days (20 and carry-over “12″) and used up every single one.

Japanese take an average of 8 paid vacation days a year

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