Americans are known for not taking vacations. While many people in the US toil through the summer, many Europeans have all of August off. There is even a theory that America’s productivity and the success of many businesses are due to what is viewed as an unhealthy worth ethic. A new study shows this to be true.

Widely regarded Pew Research recently released a study titled “How Americans Do Their Jobs,” which looked at several subjects, including how satisfied people were with their jobs. The study’s key finding was that the figure was a low 51%. The study also looked at how people view their bosses, whether they were treated respectfully, whether they worked outside of business hours, and whether they took vacations.

Pew’s research work is done through its America Trend Panel. For the job study, the questionnaire was in the field from February 6 to February 12. A total of 5,901 people responded. The data were broken into racial, income, and age groups.

In the section about time off, the primary conclusion was that “Among workers who say their employer offers them paid time off for vacation, doctors’ appointments or to deal with minor illnesses, 48% say they typically take all the time off they are offered, while 46% say they take less time off than they are allowed.”

Many reasons people did not take their vacations involved job anxiety. Of the people who did not take the time offered, 49% were worried they would fall behind, and another 43% felt bad that their coworkers would need to work harder to make up for the hours they were away. (These is how the typical work weeks is around the world.)

Another 19% thought taking all of their available time off would hurt their chances for a promotion. A total of 16% believed they might lose their jobs.

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The No. 1 reason people did not take off all the time available was that they did not feel they needed to take off more vacation.

The answer brings the debate back around to why Americans appear to take fewer vacation days than people in other countries. Americans don’t even want all of their time off. Thus, productivity becomes a matter of how people spend their time. (These are the states where workers are most likely to burn out.)

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