Iran Gets 53 Paid Days Off, Even Russia 42 — the US Gets 10: Only One Country in the World Has It Worse, and It's Not Who You'd Guess

Every year or so, somebody publishes a map of how much paid time off workers around the world are legally owed, and every year the United States lands somewhere between "sad" and "is this a typo." This year's version, compiled by Resume.io and visualized by Visual Capitalist, covers 185 countries, and the results are the same flavor of grim, just with fresher garnish.

The short version: the global average is 30 paid days a year, combining mandated vacation and paid public holidays. The United States gets 10. Zero of those are vacation. They're federal holidays. The government isn't promising you a beach. It's promising you Columbus Day.

Who's Winning (Spoiler: Not Us)

• Iran — 53 days. Twenty-six days of statutory leave plus 27 public holidays, the most public holidays of any country on Earth. Yes, Iran has a six-day workweek, which eats into the total. It still laps us five times over.
• San Marino — 46 days. Population roughly 33,000, all of whom are apparently on holiday.
• Yemen — 45. Bahrain — 44. Kuwait and Oman — 42 and 39. The Gulf shows up near the top of this list like it's a group project they actually did.
• Russia — 42. Russia. Forty-two. Same as Monaco and Azerbaijan. Georgia (the country) has 41.
• Most of Europe — clustered around or above 30. Austria and Malta sit up near 38. Even the UK, which loves to complain, gets 28.

The United States gets fewer paid days off than Iran, Russia, Yemen, and a microstate whose entire economy is stamps and tourists. Take a minute. You won't get it back, but take it.

Who's Losing

At the very bottom:

• Micronesia — 9 days. A chain of islands in the western Pacific with a population smaller than Tulsa. That's it. That's the one country worse than us. Not China (16). Not India (18). Not Japan, which has an actual word for "death by overwork" and still manages 26. Micronesia.
• United States — 10 days. Second to last out of 185. Canada, our polite upstairs neighbor, gets 14, which isn't great either but at least rounds to a fortnight.

And to be clear about what "10" means: the US has no federal law requiring paid vacation at all. None. The 10 days in the ranking are public holidays that the government observes, which your employer may or may not honor depending on whether you work retail, a hospital, or for a man named Craig who "doesn't believe in Presidents' Day."

"But Americans Get Vacation From Their Jobs"

Sure. Some do. The average American employee gets about 14 days after a year at a company, per OECD figures cited in the report. But roughly 15% of civilian workers get zero paid leave of any kind, and the operative word in all of it is may. Your two weeks are a gift from your employer, not a right, and gifts can be revoked during a "restructuring."

Meanwhile, in 23 countries on this list, 30 days of paid leave is the legal floor. Thirty. As a minimum. Written down. Enforceable.

The US is the only developed country with no mandated paid leave, and we compensate for it with a national holiday celebrating a guy who got lost looking for India. Balance.

The One Silver Lining

Honestly, I looked. The best I can offer is this: if you live in the Far Northern Territories of Russia, you're entitled to 66 days. So there's a pathway. It's cold and it involves learning Russian and it's in Siberia, but it's a pathway.

Alternatively, Panama sits at joint 17th and is the only North American country in the top 100. Panama. Think about it over your Columbus Day, which your boss has rescheduled to a Tuesday.