Angelika If you're like me, you are looking forward to the time off between Christmas and New Years, which in Germany is usually a quiet time where most companies send their employees on vacation. We've mentioned here several times that the vacation regulations in the U.S. are somewhat antiquated, as there's no legally enforcible required minimum on paid vacation for many employees, and it's usually up to the employer on how many vacation days they grant their workforce in a given year.

That of course doesn't mean that there's no paid vacation. To the contrary, all reasonably sized companies try to attract employees through vacation benefits. In most cases, the number of vacation days increases after a few years of employment. For example, I've been working for the same employer for seven years, and I now get 21 days of paid vacation per year. Michael has a similar deal in place. At my employer, however, I can only keep 80 hours of vacation and then need to take a day off or lose additionally accumulated vacation time. Yahoo is more generous in this regard. The German system, however, which guarantees the employee a yearly allotment of vacation days, which can be carried over from one employer to the next, is completely unknown here. After changing jobs, the employee usually starts at ten vacation days per year and will only increase this grant by staying with the same employer for several years.

According to a study published in May 2013 by the "Center for Economic and Policy Research", one out of four working Americans don't have paid vacation or holidays. Only 50% of workers in low-income groups enjoy vacation benefits while 90% of highly paid employees take them for granted. And only 35% of part time job workers are eligible for paid vacation.

On top of that, many companies don't distinguish between sick days and vacation days, but instead grant their employees "paid time off". In this case, it doesn't matter whether the employee is absent from work because of an illness or went on vacation, because in either case the time is deducted from their "paid time off" balance. So, if someone is unfortunate enough to get sick more often than others, their vacation balance shrinks considerably.

Some companies now came up with the clever idea to adapt vacation benefits according to their employee's needs: some want to take vacation more frequently, while others would rather not take any at all. I'm not sure I would opt for the latter option, but it's a choice everyone needs to make for themselves. To enable this, some companies allow employees to sell unused vacation days back to the employer, and find more money in their paycheck in return, and others, who would prefer longer stretches of time off, may purchase addtional vacation days. Granted, it's still only 10% of employers with vacation benefits in the U.S. offering this model, but it's very much in line with the pragmatic American way of life.

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• More topics you might be interested in:

  	German singer Herbert Grönemeyer in San Francisco
  	Ugly new buildings in San Francisco
  	Halloween, politically correct
  	Driver's Licenses for illegal immigrants in California
  	Surfing in an Alaska-grade Wetsuit
  	Top Product: Q-Bond Super Glue
  	German Coalition Agreement and Dual Citizenship
  	Americans like to line up