Greentext

Same in norway. You can also transfer some over to a new year. Or be paied out days. But you can not loose them.

the employer is forced by law to force you to take your vacation days.

Only the minimum required by law though. For example, 30 vacation days are pretty standard in Germany but the required minimum for a 5 day work week are 20 days.

The employee must take those days off whether they want to or not. In extreme cases this could get them fired even.

In Australia they accrue, and I have mixed feelings about that. It's good in the sense that you can do like the OP and save up for like a 3 month vacation, on the other hand, you'll end up overworking yourself before you get there.

I'm my state they are treated as earned income, so if you leave or they expire they automatically pay it out.

Same in the UK. I ended up taking basically all of November off because I had hardly any holidays last year. It wasn't intentional at all it just ended up like that.

It's not really worth it because who wants to be off in November, it's cold and there's nothing to do.

Sweden has a mixed system. Generally you are required to use 20 of your legally mandated minimum of 25 vacation days, and you may save the rest. The days can then be saved for 5 years, after which they must be used or paid out.

In the US, some employers do pay out vacation, but many don't, because there's no law requiring them to do so. It's perfectly legal to offer literally zero vacation days.

It depends. Usually if you leave a job and have any unused vacation left over, they have to pay you for that time. There’s a catch though, they do not have to let you carry over your vacation from year to year (use it or lose it), and/ or they can set a cap of how much vacation you can have accrued. In the latter, you can either lose any vacation over that cap, or some employers might be “kind” and let you convert excess vacation into sick time. Sick time does not have to be paid out when you quit.

My employer, for example, allows us to accrue up to 240 hours of vacation time; anything above 240 gets converted to sick time. We can accrue as much sick time as we want. So long as we remain employed, it never expires. We can also apply our sick time toward our retirement.

At my company, it’s not unheard of for employees to stick around for 20+ years before retiring. If you bank all of your sick time, you can apply toward your retirement date and retire up to three years early. And, a lot of people when they retire will have enough vacation available that they can take a month off before officially retiring; and the company does not stop them.

Also it should be noted, I work in the public sector and am considered a state employee. So that helps.

Yeah, also in France; where I work you can stick like a week into like an account and use them another year, so you don't lose them. Fun fact, since Christmas, you can no longer unstick them...

But all that is on top of the legal holidays etc.

Ugh, "floating holidays"

Finding out if vacation days carry over or are use it or lose it is something you should inquire about on day 1 at the latest.

Why would you make fun of people for not knowing things?

There was a time when you didn't know either.

Assuming it's a true story.

That said, the vacation expiration rules haven't always been around. They started showing up back in the 90s/00s, as accounting firms started counting these days as liabilities and businesses started trying to minimize how many days were outstanding on their books.

I did know a few public school teachers who did exactly this. They'd save up vacation for five years and then take a paid semester off.

Can't do it anymore, but it wasn't always this way.

Most civilized nations.

If anon is American, you know they didn't get paid for those days.

Yeah, I always obsessively double check the employee handbook before making a decision like this especially over 4 years.

unlimited PTO

Just take time off permanently. You'll still get paid, right?