For many years, I treated the absence of rest as just part of being a working adult. It wasn’t the size of my to‑do list that finally made me question that belief, but the way my body and mind started reacting to life with no real break. On the typical weekday, I would wake up with almost no enthusiasm, already knowing how my day will be mapped out. I would feel my patience and energy disappear by mid‑day, and notice that even long weekends were no longer enough to bring me back to myself.

In the United States, that experience isn’t uncommon. According to researchers at Northeastern University, the U.S. is only advanced economy in the world that doesn’t guarantee workers any paid vacation leave at the national level (Kim, 2019). Employers treat time off to feel more like a temporary privilege than a basic safeguard for mental health. Instead of being a shared social commitment, paid vacations are usually left up to individual employers and whatever benefits package someone happens to land when they get hired.

This system not only does a disservice to workers due to reduced quality of life (Hilbrect, Smale 2015). Companies lose time to disability due to depression and other types of mental injury (Nadalin, Mustar, Smith 2021). It impacts roughly three to four percent of workers at any given time and costs tens of billions of dollars every year in lost work days and related expenses. Employers end up losing more workdays to depression than to heart disease, chronic lung disease, or digestive conditions. Ironically, the latter conditions are taken much more seriously in most workplaces (Kim, 2019). 

When you look at it from a human lens, the idea that rest is optional stops making sense. From my own experience, time away from work serves as a remedy for daily stress, creates space for genuine leisure, and helps me detach mentally, even if the fix is only temporary. In the Northeastern University study, the conservation of resources theory reinforces what I, and many others, feel. Stress builds when we sacrifice our time, energy, and social support. Paid vacation can replenish those resources in a way unpaid time off simply can’t. When stress drains those reserves without relief, it feeds into a larger vulnerability to depression, especially among those already facing stressful events, biological factors, and psychological sensitivity (Kim, 2019).

While many countries require at least two to four weeks of paid vacation per year, with some mandating even more, American workers have no such baseline protection. The U.S. federal labor law that regulates wages and hours doesn’t require payment for time not worked due to vacation. This leaves it up to employers to decide whether time off will be consistently accessible and financially safe to take. On the other hand, most OECD countries guarantee at least twenty days per year; Canada and Japan require ten and Mexico requires six (Kim, 2019).

The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 took a deeper look at whether paid vacation leave actually protects against depression among working Americans. The study entailed an ongoing project that has followed more than twelve thousand people from adolescence into midlife, and it asked about their jobs, health, and life circumstances along the way. For this particular study, researchers focused on 3,380 adults who were working thirty to ninety hours per week at their main job, were in their late thirties or early forties at baseline, and had no recent unemployment in the two years before each major health assessment (Kim, 2019).

The study used the seven‑item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale short form, a screening tool where people rate how often they’ve experienced key depressive symptoms, from feeling sad to having trouble getting going. Scores ranged from zero to twenty‑one, and a cutoff of eight or more has been shown to identify likely depression with high specificity and moderate sensitivity compared to the longer, full version of the scale. Researchers examined both changes in symptom scores over about a decade and the onset of new cases of depression among people who were not depressed at the initial assessment (Kim, 2019).

Participants were asked how many days of paid vacation they were entitled to each year at their primary job during two different health modules roughly ten years apart. Some people reported very large, positive shifts, but those extreme values represented less than one percent of the sample and were carefully handled to avoid distorting the overall findings. While the study identified a variety of changes in paid vacation days, there was little change overall, with a median of zero. That’s even as some people saw notable gains or losses as their careers evolved. Interestingly, those who changed jobs between the two health modules typically experienced increases in paid vacation, but even workers who stayed with the same employer often saw some increase in vacation entitlement over time (Kim, 2019). 

If you’ve ever blamed yourself for not toughing it out through months or years without real time off, it helps to remember that your brain and body are responding to conditions that are bigger than the will to endure. Sure, resilience and individual coping strategies are helpful, but this study serves as a reminder that paid vacation might determine who stays well and who puts their wellness on the backburner. 

~ Dillon Price

Dillon Price is a native of Western Massachusetts. He has worked as a content writer for over eight years and is the owner and founder of EnRoute Jobs, a niche job board designed for digital nomads, travelers, and expats.

References

Kim, D. (2019). Does paid vacation leave protect against depression among working Americans? A national longitudinal fixed effects analysis. Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health, 45(1), 22–32. Retrieved from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7610217/.

Hilbrecht, M and Smale, B. (2015). The contribution of paid vacation time to wellbeing among employed Canadians. Leisure/Loisir, 40(3), 345–365. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14927713.2016.1144964.

Nadalin, V., Mustard, C., & Smith, P.M. (2021). The impact of adverse employment and working conditions on the risk of workplace injury in Canada. Safety and Health at Work, 12(4), 471-478. Retrieve from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209379112100055X.