The average private-sector worker in the United States gets roughly 26 paid days off per year: about 11 vacation days, 8 paid holidays, and 7 sick days, according to March 2025 Bureau of Labor Statistics data. That is the answer to how many PTO days per year most workers can expect, but it is only an average. What you actually receive depends on how long you have been with your employer, whether you work for a private company or the government, your state, and the policy written into your employee handbook. No federal law sets a minimum.
Vacation Days by Length of Service
Paid vacation is the part of PTO that grows the most with tenure. For private-sector workers, the BLS reports these averages:
- After 1 year: 11 vacation days
- After 5 years: 15 vacation days
- After 10 years: 18 vacation days
- After 20 years: 20 vacation days
State and local government workers do better at every tenure milestone. They average 13 vacation days after one year and 22 after twenty.1U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Paid Leave Benefits: Average Number of Sick and Vacation Days by Length of Service Requirement, March 2025
Sick Days and Paid Holidays
Paid sick leave for private-sector employees averages 7 days per year and does not scale with tenure the way vacation does.1U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Paid Leave Benefits: Average Number of Sick and Vacation Days by Length of Service Requirement, March 2025 Private-sector workers also get an average of 8 paid holidays per year.2U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Paid Sick Leave Was Available to 80 Percent of Private Industry Workers in 2025 Government workers again receive more, starting at 11 sick days after one year.
Averages hide who gets nothing. Roughly 80 percent of private-sector workers have access to paid vacation and paid sick leave, and 81 percent have paid holidays. The remaining fifth, concentrated in lower-wage jobs, receive no paid time off at all.3U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Table 6 – Selected Paid Leave Benefits: Access
Federal Employees Get More
If you work for the federal government, your leave is set by statute rather than employer policy, and it is more generous than the private-sector average. Annual leave accrues by length of service:
- Less than 3 years: 13 days per year
- 3 to 14 years: 20 days per year
- 15 or more years: 26 days per year
All full-time federal employees also earn 13 sick days a year, with no cap on how much unused sick leave can carry over from year to year.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 6307 – Sick Leave; Accrual and Accumulation Federal workers get 11 paid federal holidays.
Why There’s No Federal PTO Minimum
The Fair Labor Standards Act governs wages and hours worked. It does not require your employer to pay you for time you don’t work, which means vacation, sick days, and holidays like Thanksgiving or Independence Day are not federally mandated. They exist because your employer chose to offer them.6U.S. Department of Labor. Vacation Leave
The Family and Medical Leave Act is often confused with paid leave, but it isn’t. FMLA gives eligible workers up to 12 weeks of job-protected leave for a serious health condition, the birth or adoption of a child, or to care for a family member. That leave is unpaid. Your employer must continue your health insurance and restore you to the same or a nearly identical role afterward, and you can layer your accrued paid leave on top of FMLA leave to keep a paycheck coming, but FMLA itself pays nothing.7U.S. Department of Labor. Family and Medical Leave Act
State Laws That Add to What You Get
More than 20 states and the District of Columbia now require employers to provide paid sick leave. The typical structure lets you earn one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 to 52 hours you work, with most states capping the yearly total at 40 hours, or five days.8National Conference of State Legislatures. Paid Sick Leave Most of these laws include a waiting period, commonly 90 days, before a new hire can start using the leave. The leave can generally be used for your own illness, to care for a sick family member, or for reasons tied to domestic violence or stalking.
Separately, 13 states and D.C. run paid family and medical leave insurance programs funded through payroll contributions. These programs provide partial wage replacement, usually for 8 to 12 weeks, for a new child, a serious personal health condition, or care for a seriously ill family member. The states with active or upcoming programs are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington, with several launching or expanding in 2026.9National Conference of State Legislatures. State Family and Medical Leave Laws Rules, benefit amounts, and eligibility vary.
How Your Days Actually Show Up
Employers hand out PTO one of two ways. A lump-sum policy drops your full year of leave into your bank on a set date, often January 1 or your work anniversary. An accrual policy has you earn leave gradually over each pay period.
The math on accrual is simple. If your employer offers 10 vacation days a year, that’s 80 hours, and if you’re paid every two weeks (26 pay periods), you earn about 3.08 hours per period. Your pay stub usually shows year-to-date accrual, which is the easiest way to check that your balance matches what your offer letter promised.
Many employers make new hires wait before using any accrued leave. Ninety days is common, but it isn’t universal, and some employers let you use time immediately. The specifics live in your employee handbook.
Unlimited PTO in Practice
Some employers, especially in tech and professional services, advertise “unlimited” PTO with no set annual cap. Workers under those policies take about 16 days off a year on average, only marginally more than the 14 days taken by employees with traditional capped plans.
The tradeoff shows up on your way out. Because you never build a bank of hours under an unlimited policy, there is typically nothing for the employer to pay out when you leave, even in states that would otherwise require a payout of accrued vacation.
What Happens to Unused PTO When You Leave
Whether you get paid for unused vacation at the end of a job depends on your state and your employer’s written policy. A handful of states, including California, Colorado, and Montana, treat accrued vacation as earned wages and forbid “use-it-or-lose-it” policies outright. In those states, your employer has to pay out all unused vacation when you quit or are fired.
Other states, including Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and North Dakota, require payout at termination without necessarily banning use-it-or-lose-it during employment. A few states, such as Maryland, Nebraska, and New York, make payout the default but let employers override it with a written policy communicated at hire.
Everywhere else, the employee handbook controls. If your policy says unused time is forfeited when you leave, that language is generally enforceable. Reading the leave section of your handbook when you start, and watching your accrued balance if you are thinking about leaving, is the way to know what you actually have.
Where Your Real Number Comes From
The 26-day average is a useful benchmark, but the number that applies to you is the one written in your offer letter, employee handbook, or collective bargaining agreement, adjusted up by any state sick-leave or paid-family-leave law that covers you. If you are new to a job, that document is worth reading in full; if you have been somewhere a while, it is worth rereading, because leave policies change and tenure milestones can quietly raise your allotment.