Need A Vacay? You're Not Alone...at Least in the U.S.

It's common knowledge that Americans work longer every year than any other nation of people in the first world. We take fewer vacation days, take work home more often, and generally more frequently believe that our workplace would founder without us. Part of the reason for that might be found in statistics just released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research which calculated how many paid vacation days were given by employers in almost two dozen industrialized countries.
The United States ranked dea last...that's right...workers here get fewer paid vacation days by law than any of the the other countries' workers. Our average? zero. really.
While some countries guarantee by law as many as 20 days per year of paid leave, those closer to the norm like Norway and France offer 30 days, and those nose-to-the-grindstone people in Japan offer at least 10 paid days off per year, as do our neighbors to the north, eh?
We get zip. Oh, we might get vacation days, but they are rarely paid days. Perhaps that's why we take so few.
This study compared only the number of paid days of leve per year; it studied none of the effects that having (or not having) this time paid had on the average worker.
Potential good news is on the front burner in this country, though. A bill currently sits in committee that would require companies in this country to give a week off with pay to American workers. Given the poisonous partisanship that has infected our lawmakers (and general public), I give the bill a zero chance of becoming law.
If only I could speak French!