How Many Vacation Days in the USA: Averages, Holidays, and PTO

How many vacation days workers in the USA get depends on tenure and employer, but the averages are clear: private-sector employees receive about 11 paid vacation days after one year on the job, 15 after five years, 18 after ten, and 20 after twenty years of service.¹ No federal law requires employers to offer any paid vacation at all, which makes the United States the only advanced economy in the world with a statutory minimum of zero.

Average Vacation Days by Years of Service

The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks paid leave benefits across the private sector, and its March 2025 data shows a steady climb with tenure:

After 1 year: 11 days
After 5 years: 15 days
After 10 years: 18 days
After 20 years: 20 days

State and local government workers do slightly better at every milestone, averaging 13 days after one year and 22 days after twenty.¹

These are averages, and the spread behind them is wide. Larger employers with 500 or more workers tend to offer more vacation than small businesses with fewer than 100 employees. Professional and technical fields such as software development and engineering typically sit above the average, while service-sector and construction workers cluster toward the lower end. Industry, company size, and occupation together matter more than any single factor.

Who Actually Has Paid Vacation

The averages only describe workers who get vacation at all. As of March 2025, 77 percent of private-industry workers had access to paid vacation. That headline number hides a sharp split. Eighty-nine percent of full-time private-sector workers have paid vacation, compared to just 38 percent of part-time workers.²

Wages matter just as much. Among workers in the lowest 10 percent of the wage distribution, only 43 percent have any paid vacation. That figure rises to 89 percent for workers in the third wage quartile.² Lower-wage and part-time workers, who often need paid rest the most, are the least likely to receive it.

Why the Number Depends on Your Employer

The Fair Labor Standards Act sets rules for minimum wage and overtime, but it explicitly does not require employers to provide vacation pay, sick pay, holiday pay, or any other compensation for time not worked.³ The Department of Labor treats vacation as a private agreement between employer and employee, so a company can legally offer zero paid days off and remain fully compliant with federal law.⁴

Your vacation terms live in the offer letter, employee handbook, or collective bargaining agreement, and that document is the only enforceable standard. If it says you get ten days, you get ten days. If it says nothing, the employer owes nothing.

Federal Employees Get More

Federal government workers operate under a completely different system, set by statute. Annual leave accrues on a three-tier schedule tied to years of creditable service:

Under 3 years: 4 hours per biweekly pay period (13 days per year)
3 to 14 years: 6 hours per biweekly pay period, with a bonus in the final pay period (20 days per year)
15 or more years: 8 hours per biweekly pay period (26 days per year)

These rates are codified in 5 U.S.C. § 6303 and apply to full-time employees on a standard biweekly schedule.⁵ Federal employees can carry up to 240 hours (30 days) of unused annual leave into the next year; anything above that is forfeited under the “use or lose” rule.⁶ At the top tier, 26 days works out to roughly six weeks of vacation per year.

One narrow rule reaches into the private sector. Under the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act, employees on covered federal service contracts must receive paid vacation as specified in the applicable wage determination, often one week after a year of continuous service.⁷ This covers a small slice of the workforce and does not change the general picture.

How the US Compares to Other Countries

The gap between the United States and its peers is unusual. Among OECD member nations, the U.S. is the only country with a statutory minimum of zero paid vacation days. Most European countries guarantee at least 20. France, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, and Finland all mandate 25. The United Kingdom guarantees 28 including public holidays.⁸

Even countries with lower mandates surpass the U.S. floor. Japan and Canada each require a minimum of 10 paid vacation days, and South Korea mandates 15. American workers rely on market pressure and individual bargaining in a way that simply doesn’t apply to workers in peer economies.

Paid Holidays Are Not Vacation Days

When people count time off, they often mix in paid holidays. Most employers grant paid time off for a handful of standard holidays: New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Many add more, bringing the total to eight or ten. This time is separate from vacation because the employer picks the date rather than the employee.

No federal law requires private employers to observe holidays, close their doors, or pay employees for holiday time off.³ Some companies also offer one or two “floating holidays” that employees can use for religious observances or personal dates outside the standard calendar. Whether holidays are paid at the regular rate or at a premium depends entirely on the employer’s policy.

What Happens to Unused Days When You Leave

Once you know how many days you have, the next question is what happens to any you haven’t used when you leave the job. The answer depends almost entirely on your state.

More than a dozen states require employers to pay out all accrued, unused vacation in the final paycheck. In those states, earned vacation is treated as wages already earned through work performed, and failing to pay it out exposes the employer to the same penalties as failing to pay regular wages, including waiting-time penalties or additional damages in some jurisdictions.

A smaller group of states prohibits “use-it-or-lose-it” policies outright, meaning vacation time cannot be forfeited once earned. The majority of states, however, allow employers to adopt use-it-or-lose-it provisions as long as the policy is clearly communicated in writing before the employee starts accruing. If your handbook says unused vacation expires at year-end, that policy is likely enforceable in most states.

Regardless of state law, employers must honor their own written policies. If your handbook promises a payout at termination and the company doesn’t deliver, that can be a breach of contract or a wage claim on its own.

Unlimited PTO Changes the Math

About 7 percent of U.S. companies now offer unlimited PTO, up from roughly 1 percent a decade ago. The concept sounds generous: take as many days as you need, no accrual, no cap. In practice, employees at companies with unlimited PTO often take fewer days than those with a defined allotment, because there is no clear entitlement and no balance ticking upward to remind them.

The legal wrinkle matters at exit. In states that require payout of accrued vacation at termination, unlimited PTO creates an ambiguity: if there is no defined accrual, there may be nothing to pay out. Some employers adopt unlimited PTO partly to avoid those payout obligations. Courts and labor agencies are still working through how these policies interact with state wage laws. If your employer switches from a traditional vacation plan to unlimited PTO, watch whether any already-accrued balance gets paid out during the transition.

1
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Paid Leave Benefits: Average Number of Sick and Vacation Days by Length of Service Requirement, March 2025
2
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Table 6: Selected Paid Leave Benefits: Access
3
U.S. Department of Labor. Handy Reference Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act
4
United States Department of Labor. Vacations
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 USC 6303 – Annual Leave; Accrual
6
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Annual Leave
7
eCFR. 29 CFR 4.173 – Meeting Requirements for Vacation Fringe Benefits
8
OECD. Table PF2.3.A – Additional Leave Entitlements of Working Parents