40 percent of U.S. workers don’t get paid for vacation or sick days

About 40 percent of U.S. workers, or more than 55 million Americans, don’t get paid when they take vacation or sick days, the government reported.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a report yesterday that leave policies by U.S. employers tend to be a patchwork of individual arrangements that favor healthy, well-educated professional employees.
The report underscores how the U.S. is lagging on such policies.

It’s the only advanced economy without a national leave policy guaranteeing a break for employees, said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. Austria guarantees as many as 43 paid days off, and a young German worker can take as many as 40.

“Of the 15 most economically developed countries, 14 have sick and vacation time off,” Schmitt said in a telephone interview. “We’re the outlier.” Read more >>