What We Need To Know About Paid Time Off

in 1910, President William Taft said we should all have three months off because there “is such a thing as exhausting the capital of one’s health and constitution.”

Now, more than a century later, economist Betsey Stevenson has a paid time off proposal.

Let’s take a look.

Paid Time Off

Among the countries with paid holidays and paid vacations, the U.S. is at the bottom of the list:

What we are entitled to dates back to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Passed in 1938, the FSLA focuses on the 40-hour workweek, child labor prohibitions, a minimum wage, and “overtime protections.”

As for whether workers get paid time off, it depends on where they live:

The Stevenson Plan

In Dr. Stevenson’s plan how much you work determines how much you get. While she provides the details in her 32 page proposal, basically you get one hour of paid time off for every 50 hours that you work. Then, after participating for two years, she boosts your benefit to one hour for every 25 hours worked. However, she also suggests that employers need not count hours and instead should offer full time full year employees 80 hours of paid leave.

Looking at payroll and compliance, costs, and worker disruption, she presents a persuasive perspective.

Our Bottom Line: Our Leave Time

Our access to paid leave does vary:

But many of us don’t even take our leave time–even at firms like Netflix where vacation time is unlimited. According to Pew Research, salaried workers and managers take less time off than hourly workers and non-managers.. Asked why, some say they don’t need to, others worry about falling behind, and a third group does not want to add to co-workers’ workload:

I wonder if vacation attitudes in the U.S. reflect the Prisoners’ Dilemma. Related to game theory, the Prisoner’s Dilemma explains how your behavior is based on what you expect someone else to do. If you predict a co-worker will not take some time off, then, fearing disapproval from a boss and your associates, you will not take any either. Add that to a work ethic that is a social norm and the happiness that Americans say they derive from work, and you have less vacation time.

And less pressure to enact paid time off legislation.

My sources and more: Thanks to Timothy Taylor’s Conversable Economist for alerting me to the Betsey Stevenson article. From there, the Financial Times shared some insight and facts as did Pew Research.