Key Findings

  • According to data jointly analyzed by the Deel HR platform and venture capital firm a16z, most employees prefer taking a single day off at a time, followed by one-week and two-week vacations. The data skews toward startups, tech companies, and remote-first enterprises.
  • Workers in Norway and the UK are more likely to use all their annual leave, but even then, only about half do so. In the US, this rate is below 40%.
  • "North America is more stingy with vacation time than Europe, but regional differences remain significant, especially among employees who claim to use 100% of their paid leave," wrote Lauren Thomas, founding economist at Deel, in a blog post.

Deeper Insights

Europeans may be the best practitioners of "vacationmaxxing," with France leading the way, where employees with fixed leave take an average of 28 days off per year. In the US, that number drops to 16 days.

"Brazil breaks the trend in how employees take time off. It turns out there's a reason for this! Brazil has some special laws regarding how employees take vacation," Thomas wrote.

Ogletree Deakins explained this in a 2022 blog post: "Under Brazil's 2017 labor reform, employees can split their vacation into three segments, but one segment must be at least 14 consecutive days, and the other two must each be at least 5 consecutive days."

In the US, according to a report released by FlexJobs in October 2025, nearly a quarter of employees did not take any vacation time in the past year.

Some companies are trying to incentivize employees to take time off by offering paid travel benefits, a career expert previously told HR Dive. The expert said individuals need to step away from work to avoid burnout and stay engaged.