how much paid time off do you get?

by Alison Green on April 17, 2024

Last week was the annual Ask a Manager salary survey, which as of this writing received more than 12,000 responses.

This week, let’s compare paid time off.

Fill out the form below to anonymously share how much paid time off you get, in the context of your field and other relevant factors. (Do not leave your info in the comments section! If you can’t see the survey questions, try this link instead.)

When you’re done, you can view all the responses in a sortable spreadsheet.

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{ 398 comments }

{ 398 comments… read them below }

  1. alldogsarepuppies*

    If we have some days of forced PTO (ie office is closed but you have to use PTO) do you want us to separate that into the other category?

    Also if PTO partially roles over and partially does not

    1. londonedit*

      We can only take 5 days over, but I classed that as ‘no and it rolled over’ – but it’s not like in the US, where you can seemingly collect time off for ages. We have to use ours by the end of March the following year.

      1. Traffic Engineer*

        It’s not a US thing, it’s a company by company thing. Most companies I know of have some cut off amount for rolled over PTO, at which point anything beyond that amount is lost. At my company, it’s the equivalent of 1 year’s earned PTO.

        1. The Real Fran Fine*

          Yeah, my current company allows unused vacation days to be rolled over. However, once you hit a certain accrual amount, then they basically make you take leave, otherwise, you won’t be able to accrue anymore time.

          The company before that? Yeah, rollovers were not a thing. And the company before that allowed rollovers, but if you left the company with massive amounts of vacation time left, you’d forfeit all but five days.

          1. Effing Mono?!?!*

            Right? I wish there had been an option to clarify how much could roll over.

            For instance I earn 160 vacation days a year, which amounts to about 6 per pay period. My earned balance can never be above 160 at the end of the pay period. However if we’ve reached the end of the fiscal year and I’ve only used 80 hours the rest do roll over.

            And sick time is a totally different game and can just keep rolling over until you have something like 900 hours banked.

              1. Bitte Meddler*

                99.99% sure that’s a typo and that Effing Mono meant “160 HOURS”.

                160 days is 60% of the weekdays in a year.

          2. Anecdata*

            Mine is also “can roll over but capped” (you can never have more than 1 yrs allocation banked) and I marked it as rollover allowed

          1. Nina*

            My former employer allowed rollover because in my country the law requires that employees be allowed to get the benefit of all their holiday time, either as time or as cash-out on departure, and the kind of deadlines we were working to meant it was cheaper and easier for the company if a lot of leave was paid in cash.

            My final paycheck there included 7 weeks of holiday time and 2 weeks of days in lieu.

          2. StephChi*

            I can roll over sick days but the three “personal business days” we get each year can’t be rolled over. Use ’em or lose ’em! Needless to say, I use mine. Never leave compensation on the table! Having said that, I have to figure out how I’m going to blow all of the sick days I have accumulated since 2012 (had a new contract that year) before I retire, because those don’t get paid out. Days accumulated prior to 2012 do, though.

        3. mli0531*

          My current company allows PTO to roll over but you are capped at 300 hours. My husband’s jobs (current and past) have done something similar, though the caps have varied. He would then use PTO in order to keep accruing leave. At his most recent prior job, it was a hell of a PTO payout check when he changed jobs.

          1. Shift Work*

            For decades my company did not have a cap on roll overs, and people were accruing 6+ months taking it all at once they were about to retire. It was MESSY! A new (and much more capable) HR director came in about 10 years ago and put an end to that. Now we can rollover something like 1.5 times of what you early annually. Still a pretty big roll over. I wish they would actually pare it down more to encourage people to take time off more consistently. A LOT of my coworkers seem to horde PTO while the rest of us suffer their burned out bad attitudes in the office.

            1. Tammy 2*

              Ours rolls over and is capped at 480 hours, but this is usually factored into retirement succession planning when someone is retiring. They can either choose to take “PTO” for their last three (or however many) months or have it paid out–with different benefit and pension implications that I don’t really have to understand yet.

              Average tenure here is shortening so this may change as it becomes less common for someone to retire after decades here.

            2. not nice, don't care*

              The PTO I ‘hoard’ is my short term disability leave. After doing a few stints as family caretaker, I realize how easy and fast leave time goes with even a minor illness or injury.
              I have burnout. I have stress. I would love to use all my PTO to catch up with myself, but I also need to ensure my family gets some income if I’m down for the count.
              But yeah, bad attitude.

              1. Beth*

                This is why companies should offer substantial sick leave policies. (I personally think sick leave should be unlimited, maybe with potential to require a doctors’ note if it’s over a set, fairly high number of days.) It’s to the employer’s benefit for people to actually use their PTO! It refreshes workers, helps maintain good morale, creates opportunities to cross-train for essential tasks, offers a chance to catch if something screwy is going on (especially for roles with financial responsibilities)…it’s good for the company. But when workers can’t count on having income while they’re sick, injured, or caring for a sick or injured family member, of course they’re going to do what you’re doing.

            3. Ember*

              I never go below a week of PTO in the bank at once, because we don’t have separate sick leave.

            4. Llama Llama*

              I like a cap as a good excuse to actually take my PTO. However I do keep it at the cap. My company’s sick leave (though unlimited) is only for me and not when my kids are unwell. And in the past 3 years my kids have been in the hospital 8 weeks so that hoarded time has come in handy and I have never come close to depleting it.

              1. Llama Llama*

                And to note my company before my current has crappy maternity leave. 60% pay for 5 weeks (not 6 because the first week doesn’t count??). I only got to carry over 2 weeks of PTO so I tried to time my pregnancies to get the maximum PTO. Luckily I was effective for the one I had with them. My second pregnancy was with my current company and it sooooo much less stressful because I knew that I was just going to get 8 week (then a surprise 8 more halfway through!).

          2. Dido*

            My current company gives every employee 25 vacation days at the beginning of the calendar and doesn’t allow any rollovers, I much prefer this because everyone is forced to take time off and there is no pressure from upper management not to use it as it will be lost if you don’t

        4. The Dude Abides*

          Seconding. In my company it’s as follows

          Vacation – I’m allowed to roll one year’s worth, anything accrued above that is forfeited. Can be cashed out or used to add service time upon retirement.
          Personal – does not roll over at all
          Sick – rolls to infinity, can also be cashed out or used to buy time upon retirement.

        5. Fake Kirkland Coffee*

          My previous company was 80 hours of PTO and no vacation time rolled over. My current company has PTO, sick time, and vacation all in one lump and you can only roll over 40 hours each year.

          1. TiffIf*

            My current company is similar to yours – You can only roll over up to 40 hours each year. But if you have PTO schedule over the new year (start PTO in December and continue into January) then technically you can actually roll over more – like if I have 80 hours of PTO and I take 40 hours of PTO end of december contiguous through beginning of January then I would still carry over the max 40 hours – the January hours came from the other half of my PTO that otherwise would have been lot. This ONLY applies if you have PTO over the year change.

      2. Jiminy Cricket*

        Chiming to say I’m in the U.S. and have never worked a job where PTO rolled over at all. For me it has always been use it or lose it by December 31. My spouse can roll over a certain amount until he hits an upper limit in his bank.

      3. Hlao-roo*

        As Traffic Engineer said, vacation rollover is very company-by-company in the US.

        The US Federal Government allows leave (both vacation and sick) to rollover with no caps (as far as I’m aware, but I’m not a Federal Employee so I could be wrong).

        1. Managing Up*

          Not exactly correct RE federal – Sick rolls over with out a cap, however other PTO has a 240 hour cap for roll over, anything over 240 that it becomes use or lose by 31 December of that calendar year

        2. Bodhi Bear*

          Federal employee sick leave can rollover with no caps but annual leave is capped at 240 hours. Anything above that is lost and you have until the end of the last pay period of the calendar year to use it up, which this year went until January 12th. And your supervisor needs to have a good reason to deny you taking off use or lose time at the end of the year which can lead to you being allowed to keep it. There’s a whole process.

          And the longer you serve, the more annual leave you accrue each year. People there 0-3 years get 4 hours of annual leave each pay period, 3-15 years get 6 hours plus a bonus 4 in the last pay period to make it an even amount, and above 15 years is a full 8 hours each pay period. Sick leave is always 4 hours per pay period.

          1. Hlao-roo*

            Thank you Managing Up and Bodhi Bear for the correction that there is a cap on annual leave (vacation time) rollover for feds!

          2. Bureaucratic Hospice*

            To build off Bodhi Bear:

            The 240 Annual Leave cap is specifically for (majority) GS employees, other federal wage systems can differ for ex SES’ers have a 720 hr leave cap. You can build/earn Annual leave over that 240 cap as much as you earn in general so long as you’ve used it up by the end of the leave year (end date based on last pay period that starts in current year) – aka use or lose.

            Annual Leave will pay out at the employee’s hourly rate *at that time* either when the employee leaves federal employment or retires. Sick leave does not pay out if an employee separates from federal service but is available for re-credit if the employee returns at a later date.

            Any Sick Leave left in the kitty at the point of retirement gets credited toward a fed employee covered under FERS’s years of service for calculating their FERS basic benefit/pension (at a prorated rate of roughly 6 hr = 1 day, but with specific amount minimums)

            This all surprises new hires during onboarding, but feds earn leave on the first day of the pay period (a Sunday), so they arrive with a minimum of 8hr of leave (4 hrs sick, at least 4 hr annual – can be affected by military service)

      4. JelloStapler*

        Same we get 3 weeks that roll over and I make sure I used every last bit of what’d lose outside of that.

      5. Hannah Lee*

        At my company you can roll over up to a week of unused vacation/PTO, so up to 40 hours if you’re full time.

        The intention behind the cap is to keep people from carrying over a huge amount to minimize carry over of liability year to year (where we’re at, 100% of accrued time available if someone leaves must be paid out, plus logistically if someone earns 20-25 days PTO per year, them trying to schedule that plus multiple additional weeks off in a single year creates manpower planning issues) AND to ensure that employees are actually taking time off for work/life balance reasons.

        While per policy if you have more than 1 week banked at the end of the year you *could* lose it, since I’ve been here I haven’t seen anyone lose time (I’m the person who keeps track to that) Either people have taken enough time during the year that they didn’t go over that cap, or if they had more than a week at year end, management chose to pay out any time that would have been lost to any employee in that situation.

      6. Spero*

        We do something like this – it can roll over for a year. So my 2022 leave can roll over in 2023 if unused, but I have to use it before 2024 begins or I lose it.

      7. Hot Flash Gordon*

        It’s company by company. Hourly staff accrue their time off and can roll it over every year until they reach a max amount (it’s like 250 hours). Once you max it out, you don’t accrue any more until you use what you have banked. Salaried employees get a set bucket of time at the beginning of the year. You can only roll over 3 days and have to use it before the end of February. I get 5 weeks of vacation and it’s honestly really difficult for me to use it all (I don’t really travel much and we don’t have kids). It’s a mad dash at the end of the year to use it up so I don’t leave money on the table.

    2. Completely Marshmallow*

      Same, my PTO partially rolls over (vacation leave rolls over up to a cap where you are required to cash out rather than stockpile more than 2 years worth of vacation) and I answered the survey as “yes, rolls over”.

    4. ope_sorry*

      Adding because there was no place in the form – I work in public k-12 education in the US. Our teachers get 10 weeks UNPAID time off in the summer (minus meetings, trainings, summer school) but we are not allowed to collect unemployment (unlike, say, seasonal asphalt layers who are routinely off every Dec-Feb but DO get to collect unemployment). Just sayin

      1. Proud Union Educator*

        I also wasn’t sure how to indicate this – we work/are paid for a 180 day contract so school breaks and even federal holiday “days off” during the year aren’t actually *paid* days off for us.

        1. just a random teacher*

          Yeah, this is how it works in my district too – I’m a [specific number of days, it’s somewhere between 180 and 200] contract employee, meaning that my yearly salary and year-round benefits (and years toward my pension) all are based around me working those [number around 180 or 200] specific days each year as set by the school calendar and my union contract. The other days (winter break, spring break, summer break, certain holidays, assorted other no-school days when I don’t have to report to work) are non-contract days and I can take vacations, work another job, spend the entire day in bed, or whatever else on those days because I am not paid to work for the school district on them, in the same way that I don’t work on Saturdays because it’s not a workday for me.

    5. Jeje*

      I just counted that a vacation time. Burning PTO for plant/office shutdowns feels pretty unfair, even though you see it quite a bit in manufacturing. I would be cross to know how common this actually is.

    6. Perfectly normal-size space bird*

      I just went with yes for rollover. We have separate PTO banks and sick leave rolls over while vacation doesn’t. Sick leave rollover is capped at nine days. Though people are rarely in danger of hitting the cap since sick leave also accrues at an annoyingly slow rate that amounts to no more than five days a year, with most people accruing only half that. Since vacation is a set amount of hours that’s deposited at the start of the year, everyone hoards sick leave and often use vacation time for doctor’s appointments or staying home for short-term illness.

    7. Please remove your monkeys from my circus*

      For me, sick time rolls over (up to a cap of I think 20 days), but vacation time is use it or lose it. I always use my vacation time, or perhaps 1 day less (I have a lot of vacation time, by US standards), but I’ve never come close to using all my sick time.

      1. Found another monkey!*

        Mine is the opposite. Vacation can roll over to a cap of 20 days per year, but sick is 10 days use it or lose it per year – and can only be used for certain events like being sick/injured or caretaking for an immediate family member that is sick/injured.

        We also still have the old vesting cycle where you get 10 days/year vacation as a new hire, then ups to 15 days/year after 5yrs of service, then ends at 20 days/year for 10+ years of service.

    8. Stipes*

      If I had “PTO” that I had to spend on specific days, I’d personally subtract that amount from my supposed PTO and count those days under “paid holidays” instead.

    9. LaMiAb*

      We have one day paid during the year if the office is closed due to snow or something similar, and I put that day under “other”, since it is paid but not technically a paid holiday or a day of PTO that you can use as you see fit.

      I also struggled with the PTO roll over; we only roll up to 40 hours. I did mark that it rolled over, but didn’t feel like it gave a fair depiction.

    10. anonymous anteater*

      I have this too. May be an interesting extra question in a future survey. Something like: do the following factors impact your ability to setting your PTO days? (checkboxes)
      -forced PTO during company closures, weather etc
      -blackout dates for big work events of deadlines
      -coordination with colleagues to ensure coverage
      what else?

  2. Aaron*

    I’m a perma-temp working for an agency. I get my state minimum of up to five paid sick days per year, no holidays, no other PTO.

  3. MackM*

    I receive ‘unlimited’ PTO. Question 5 tells me to skip it, but it is marked as required. How should I answer question 5?

      2. Anonymous Pygmy Possum*

        I did the opposite – I put in 0 and then skipped to question 10. I guess I should have put 100000!

    2. Jiminy Cricket*

      Same. I entered the number of days I typically take. I imagine Allison can manually take those out of the spreadsheet when she pulls the data.

    4. KaboomCheese*

      What exactly is unlimited PTO? Does it mean you can take as much vacation as you want?

  4. Here for the updates.*

    I submitted but I don’t see any answers in the form (not even mine). Could be a problem on my end!

  5. Tinkerbell*

    I’m getting a “some fonts could not be loaded. Try reloading.” error at the top – it’s dismissable and doesn’t seem to affect my ability to fill out the survey, but wanted to point it out :-)

  6. bamcheeks*

    I’m totally lost on question 5 — what does “do not include holidays” mean if holidays doesn’t mean vacation time / personal days? How are those not holidays?

      1. Jamjari*

        That’s how I interpreted it as well – or as we call them in Canada, statutory holidays.

    2. Person from the Resume*

      Holiday is government / federal holiday. Public holidays are set by public authorities and vary by state or region. You’re off, but it’s not part of paid time off bucket.

      In the US a vacation (time off, trips, travel) is not a “holiday.” Brits seems to use the term vacation as equivalent to holiday. Americans generally do not.

      1. bamcheeks*

        *lightbulb moment* OH! I don’t think I’d ever clicked this. That’s what “happy holidays” means!

        1. Art3mis*

          Yes, though generally said around Christmas/Hanukah/New Years to encompass all the Northern Hemisphere Winter Holidays.

        3. Jiminy Cricket*

          I am in the U.S. and enjoying your lightbulb moment very much. I’m going to start wishing everyone a “happy holidays” when they go on vacation.

      2. Exit Persued by a Bear*

        Thanks! I’m UK based and was thoroughly confused by that! Although your explanation makes perfect sense!

        We’d generally use Holiday to mean a vacation or annual leave allowance, and Bank Holiday to specify the fixed holiday days.

        1. Nina*

          In New Zealand ‘a holiday’ is when you go away somewhere, ‘on holiday’ is when you’re not at work for any reason other than sick leave, ‘public holiday’ is when the government says everyone gets a day off, and ‘annual leave’ is when you’re taking paid time off. We don’t use ‘vacation’ at all.

    3. Frank Doyle*

      In the US, what you call a holiday we call a vacation. When we say holiday, we mean “bank holiday.”

    5. Blame It On The Weatherman*

      A holiday = Christmas, Labor day, etc.

      What US would call “going on vacation” British term “going on holiday”. But in the US a holiday is a nationally or state recognized day that most everyone is supposed to be off.

      1. londonedit*

        And I’ve also noticed US people using ‘holiday’ to mean things like Valentine’s Day or Halloween – we’d never call those ‘holidays’ because you don’t get time off. We don’t really have a name for them specifically.

  7. mango*

    I have unlimited sick days but not vacation days. How would I answer question 5, which is required and also must be a number?

    1. Hlao-roo*

      I’m in the same boat as you, so I answered question 5 with the number of vacation days I receive, then answered “yes” to question 10 and put in my estimated sick time usage for question 11.

    2. Rosemary*

      I had the same issue. I put 0 in for number of vacation days, then clicked “unlimited” for the question about unlimited sick leave. The questions were not asked/arranged in the most clear way.

      1. Putting the "pro" in "procrastinate"*

        I’m stuck on this too — unlimited sick days but finite vacation days. I don’t think I can answer the combined set of questions in a way that wouldn’t be misleading.

    3. Dances With Code*

      I have theoretically unlimited vacation, which was a real selling point when I took this job, but I found out in 2023 (when I had a bout of RSV and then, a couple months later, one of COVID) that it’s expected rather heavily to be “5 or fewer” per year as well as not more than 3 at a time unless providing a doctor note and moving to invoking short term disability. This soured me rather a lot.

      The paradoxical thing is with my original belief in that unlimited sick leave I actually had less need for it. Stress about illness and missing work is a thing that leads to a downward spiral, at least for me

  8. UnCivilServant*

    I wish there was a spot to specify annual rollover limits. We can’t carry everything indefinately, but it’s not always use it or lose it.

    1. pally*

      Agree with this. We are not allowed to carry over beyond 1 year’s worth of PTO. Have to use or lose it. Company will not cash out any of it either.

    2. WantonSeedStitch*

      This! We accrue 20 days of vacation per year, but can have up to 40 max with rollovers. After that, it’s use it or lose it. And our sick time can accrue up to six months. Of course, we also get an additional week of vacation on our 10th anniversary and another every five year anniversary after that–though that’s just one week, a separate bank, and has to get used before the next five-year anniversary.

    4. Anne Kaffeekanne*

      Yes, mine roll over but I have to take them by March 31 of that year. And also HR hates if it’s more than 2-3 days haha

    5. Justme, The OG*

      Agree. I can carry over 6 weeks of vacation leave but I would lose anything above that.

      And yes, I know that’s a lot to be able to carry over. I can carry over more sick leave than that too. It’s a perk of being a state employee.

      1. UnCivilServant*

        I can carry over 8 weeks vacation and 40 weeks sick – Also a State Employee (hence the username)

        1. Data Bear*

          We can bank almost 11 weeks. (And we accrue it fast enough that I’ve accidentally maxed it out in the past.)

          I work at a federally- funded research center. We can’t really match industry on salary and are competing with universities for talent, so we get really good benefits instead…

    6. No good jokes*

      Same here – we rollover 100%, but have a balance cap of 160 hours (and we all accrue more than that annually).

    7. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Our vacation year (Jan-Dec) and our fiscal year (April-Mar) are different, so you can roll over up to five days, I think, but you have to use them by the end of fiscal, so you do lose them eventually if you don’t use them.

    8. General von Klinkerhoffen*

      I can only carry forward anything unused above the statutory minimum. Anything below that must be used in the correct period.

      So say the minimum was 10 days a year, and I get 15, I must use at least 10 and thus cannot carry more than 5.

    9. Madeleine Matilda*

      Came here to say this. Although I can roll over 240 hours per year of vacation and I can roll over all my sick hours for however long I am employed by my employer. I have over 1200 sick hours saved now after 25+ years.

    10. Mid*

      Our sick leave is immediately available (6 days annually to start), but I have no clue if it rolls over or not—nothing is listed in our benefits guide or handbook. I believe I was told you can roll over sick days without a cap on it.

      Vacation isn’t available for 90 days, but it does accrue over those 90 days, so you end up with ~3 banked days when the 90 days is up. It rolls over, but caps out at 150% of your annual leave. (So if you get 12 PTO days per year at your seniority level, you can only bank 18 PTO days maximum.)

      We also get federal holidays off, and one birthday day that isn’t considered PTO.

      I live in a state that requires banked PTO be paid out when someone leaves their job, so caps on hours banked seems pretty standard.

    11. Littorally*

      Same here. We can carry over 5 vacation days, but they have to get used in the 1st quarter of the following year. (They are the first ones that get pulled if we take vacation.)

  9. badatnames*

    I know the survey is already up, but it would be interesting to know about policies around accrual – how long do you have to wait to take vacation after you start? Do you only accrue in monthly increments? Maybe my organization is a total outlier, but you can take your entire annual sick leave allotment immediately – you receive it at your work anniversary in one chunk. In practice, you can also do this with vacation, though the employee handbook says that it accrues per paycheck so that people can’t get their annual allotment, take a month of vacation, and then quit.

    1. Blue Pen*

      In my org, for unionized employees, they’re accruing vacation time when they start; but they can’t request time off until six months have passed. I started in the org as a unionized employee, but I’m pretty sure non-unionized employees can begin taking PTO once they pass the probationary period (three months).

    2. mlem*

      Yeah, my company fronts 16 hours vacation time and 16 hours sick time to new employees, with their monthly accruals diminished for the first year to compensate. Both categories are roll-with-cap-at-160-hours. Everyone also gets two use-or-lose “personal” days per year, including new hires.

      There are better policies out there, absolutely, but at least it isn’t “no time off for your first year”.

    3. Medium Sized Manager*

      We are not able to borrow sick time – that accrues throughout the year. But, you can go negative in vacation time. I often share the “horror” story of a young employee who borrowed three weeks of vacation for their wedding and honeymoon, got randomly offered a great job while gone, and immediately left. They were shocked to learn the company wanted their 2 grand of unearned vacation time back.

    4. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Ours accrues in the HR system itself, but practically speaking it doesn’t actually matter, e.g. if I logged in in like March, it might say I have 3.5 of my vacation days earned, but if I wanted to take a week (5 days) off in March I would be allowed to without issue. As of today, I have 2.67 sick days earned but if I was sick for a week that also wouldn’t be an issue.

      But I’m also not planning on leaving, so I don’t know what happens if you’ve taken more than you’ve “earned” up to that point and then quit. I assume they just take it out of your remaining pay or ignore it or what.

    5. A Poster Has No Name*

      My company used to be that way, when I started (almost 22 years ago). We got 2 weeks, starting day 1. That increased to 3 weeks at 5 years, with the whole allotment dropping on Jan 1. When it increased, you got the whole amount Jan 1 of the year in which you hit 5 years, which was nice. You could rollover a week.

      Sometime after I hit 5 years they switched to an accrual system, by month, no rollover, but gave us an extra week of vacation. Then last year they went ‘unlimited’ for vacation (but not sick time).

    6. Perfectly normal-size space bird*

      Our vacation comes in one big chunk at the start of the calendar year while sick leave accrues. As far as I can tell, the policies are based on some kind of arcane ritual set by an oracle sitting atop a volcanic fissure spewing hallucinogenic fumes. One day, I checked my sick leave balance and discovered I had 40 hours of vacation sitting there. No idea when I became eligible for it, there was no announcement or email reminder from HR. I noticed it in December and had just barely enough time to use it all before the end of the year.

      At the start of this year, I checked my balance and discovered there were 80 hours of vacation leave, which is an indication of being bumped up to a new classification. Again, no notification. I just now checked my balance and it says 77 hours, which I thought was weird because I took 8 hours of vacation last week. I looked at the transaction history and a random 5 hours of vacation was deposited on Monday. No idea why. Maybe the oracle was feeling extra tipsy.

    7. Person from the Resume*

      Hmmmm … in my organization, the US government, we earn sick leave and annual leave (PTO) each two week pay period. You do not get them in a lump sum. You can take them as soon as you earn them and can request advance leave, if needed.

      That definitely seems like an outlier to me based on my own experience and my friends (although I don’t really quiz my friends on precise leave policies).

    8. Beth**

      Ours is given at the start of the leave year (April) but technically accrues throughout the year. If you leave when you have taken more than you accrued, it comes out from your last pay. We get 26 days per year. If you leave at the end of September (6 months into the leave year) and you’ve taken less than 13 days, you get the remainder paid in cash. If you have taken more than 13 days, then the difference is deducted from your final pay.

    9. I am Emily's failing memory*

      For us, vacation is unlimited. Sick leave is 9 days a year that accrues at a few hours per each pay period until/unless you hit the 50-day cap. Unused sick leave is rolled over indefinitely.

      We also get 11 public holidays, 2 floating holidays, 2 community service days, and the entire office closes for 1 week (5 biz days) every summer which is paid time for all employees but is not considered “vacation.” The distinction is relevant, even though our vacation is unlimited.

      Among other things, since we transitioned to unlimited vacation policy, managers like myself were given access to a handful of real-time reports we can review regularly to help us keep tabs on the amount of vacation our direct reports and our direct reports’ direct reports take, so we can intervene if we see evidence that certain employees aren’t taking enough time off, and the office closure days don’t count towards leave taken in our reports.

      There’s a hard minimum of 10 days per year we’re supposed to ensure everyone who reports to us takes, but managers with multiple reports and managers who manage managers are also supposed to be keeping an eye out for signs that we might need to probe more deeply into how work is being distributed if we see a sizable disparity emerge in the amount of time that people in similar roles that report up to us are taking off. I.E., is the person who’s taking less vacation actually content with that, or is it because they don’t feel like they can afford to take as much time as their peers, possibly because work that should be falling to their peers is landing on them? The reports are super helpful when you have multiple employees and aren’t going to remember the specifics of who took exactly how many days 10 or 11 months ago, and those kinds of disparities could easily go unnoticed if the peers have different front-line managers and the person getting saddled with a disproportionate share of work doesn’t raise the issue proactively.

    10. Blame It On The Weatherman*

      Everywhere I’ve worked (besides retail which offered no paid sick or vac), PTO accrues every two week paycheck. You do have to wait the first three months of employment to take it, but you still accrue during that time, so at the three month mark in your role you get three months’ worth of sick and vacation time in your bank at once.

    11. Troubadour*

      At my workplace, annual (ie vacation) leave accrues essentially on an hourly/daily basis, as far as I can tell from the system, and you’re entitled to use whatever you have as soon as it becomes available. Ie for each hour you work you get your entitlement of some fraction of that hour, so within a few days of starting full-time you’ll have earned about an hour and you could take that if you want. Taking annual leave in advance is discouraged but possible in some circumstances.

      Our sick leave is ‘unlimited’ so that also kicks in immediately.

    12. Michigander*

      We receive our entire accrual on January 1 and you can take it at any time in the year. When you first start you receive an amount of annual leave prorated to the amount of the year you’re working. I started in November so I didn’t have much to start with that year, but my boss let me borrow a bit from the next year to cover my Christmas leave.

  10. paige*

    This form made it difficult to share what I’m sure is a common experience at places with unlimited PTO – we have unlimited vacation/personal days, but a bank of 8 sick days, because some states (California) require a minimum number of days and require it to be paid out when you leave. No one at my organization actually puts their sick days in as sick days, we just use the unlimited bucket, but technically that’s how it’s supposed to work.

    1. Jen*

      That’s so interesting. It’s the opposite at my company (unlimited sick days, but a specified number of vacation days and personal days).

    2. Decidedly Me*

      Far fewer states requires specific tracking of sick time than those that don’t. From a recent HR doc on this, 9 states + DC require it, even though it is an unlimited policy, while the rest don’t. I’m not sure how many require it to be paid out.

    3. hello*

      huh, do you know if that requirement has a company size limit? because, as far as I can tell, my tiny California company just has unlimited PTO with no differentiation between any of the different types.

    4. OrdinaryJoe*

      Yes – I’m in a similar situation. Technically, we have 12 days of vacation but we stopped tracking it 4+ years ago and no one cares and it’s now considered more of a … “Do your job, check email when you’re just casually off and let someone know when you’re going to be Really Out of Touch”. It’s a great system in a lot of ways but other ways means you rarely, rarely 100% unplug.

    5. raktajino*

      not in California but that’s what I have too. In my case, it’s probably because only salaried positions at my company have unlimited PTO, and it was easier to keep the other benefits in place (holiday, volunteer, sick). Plus, they have been fiddling with the sick leave policy ever since covid started, to ensure people could take the time they need without feeling undue pressure to come back. The unlimited move is also very recent, so maybe it will change in the future.

      I like the separate buckets so I can be sure I’m taking my proper time off and it’s not just that I got covid early in the year. Not sure how to fill out the survey though.

  11. The Real Fran Fine*

    Technically, my company provides 10 sick days a year. However, any unused time can be rolled over from year to year with no cap. I’ve been with my company for five years, and I have over 200 hours accrued. Additionally, my company offers varying vacation time by years of service (I’ll receive an additional two paid days on my fifth anniversary, bringing my yearly days to 17), but like our sick days, unused vacation time rolls over (though there is a cap on how many hours we can have in the bank until we have to take time off and start accruing leave time again).

    Not sure how to answer the question that asks for combined leave amounts due to these quirks…

    1. Ariaflame*

      Similar. I have so much unused sick leave. I wouldn’t get it paid out if I left, but it’s nice knowing it’s there if something goes pair shaped.

      This also didn’t cover an Australian thing called Long Service Leave. Every 10 years (in some places 7) you get a lump of leave that’s equivalent to 2-3 months that you can take. The trick is scheduling it. I’m a bit overdue for mine. They get a bit stroppy if you don’t take it after a while though because it counts as a debit on their books.

    2. Clisby*

      Yeah, that sounds like the company I retired from. IIRC, it was 2 weeks’ PTO for the first year; 3 weeks as of year 2; 4 weeks after year 5; 5 weeks after year 10; and somewhere along in there was 6 weeks, but can’t remember how many years to get there – maybe 20? Anyhow, we could roll over 6 weeks of vacation time, but you didn’t have to earn 6 weeks of PTO in a year to get that point – the cap applied to everyone. PTO was paid out when you left. Sick leave accrued at 1.5 days per month (so 18/year) – I don’t recall any cap on the rollover for sick leave, but none of it was paid out when you left. It paid for 6 weeks of my FMLA leave, though, which was nice.

    3. Blue Pen*

      Same. My org gives us 9 sick days every year, but I never end up using more than 1-3 of those days, so the rest roll over. I have something like 55 days of sick time now since starting.

    4. cloudy*

      Yeah I wasn’t sure how to answer this one either…

      We get 15 days paid sick leave that accrues every 1 year.
      But we get a bonus 132 days paid sick leave on top of that that accrues every 5 years. I didn’t include this in the list since it isn’t part of my annual leave but leaving it off felt like it was making my 15 days look so bad! It’s part of the same normal accrual, it’s just not annual.
      (And then on top of that there’s an additional 132 days sick leave that accrues every 5 years that is at 50% pay)

    5. ecnaseener*

      I understand that question to be asking for accrued time over the course of one year, not how much time you actually have in the bank at this moment.

  12. Delta Delta*

    As a self-employed person, I find this discussion interesting. On one hand, part of me is a little envious of people who know they get X time off and that they take it. On the other hand, I may have flexibility others don’t have. I am looking forward to reading the results so I can get a decent gut check on how much time I should be taking for myself, since I don’t take much.

    1. 20 Points for the Copier*

      Yes, I haven’t taken it as a self-employed person. Theoretically I have unlimited leave. In reality I take maybe 5 full days and another 5-10 half days off per year (but work a very flexible schedule, which I much prefer to fully unplugging). My partner, on the other hand, takes 8-10 weeks but she is in a very different phase and has different priorities.

    2. Thomas*

      On the one hand you don’t get paid for being sick and might even have to pay yourself (if you need to employ or contract someone to do the work). On the other hand, you don’t need to fear being disciplined or fired for having the audacity to get ill.

      1. Katie Impact*

        Yeah, as someone who has a sleep disorder and some other issues that don’t prevent me from working but do make it hard to stick to a regular schedule, being self-employed and finding clients who just care about whether I meet deadlines is a lifesaver. At the same time, it does mean giving up on some things that are normally taken for granted in a standard employment relationship — not just paid time off, but knowing how much work you’ll have and therefore how much you’re going to earn from one month to the next. Budgeting can be a challenge sometimes.

      2. münchner kindl*

        In my country the standard recommendation for people who want to start their own business is both to pay their own private health insurance (normal employee have standard health insurance or dependent insurance) and to get “sickness money insurance” – that is, the insurance pays x Euros per day on which you are sick, to make up for your missed income, since your fixed costs still run.

        Employees are used to the first 6 weeks of illness (with a yellow report from the doctor that you are indeed sick) being paid by the employer, so it’s easy to overlook that that changes if you’re self-employed.

        There’s also a very strong recommendation (along with classes and books) to do a lot of calulcations before starting your business: how high fixed costs will be, what income you expect per month, and how much you would have to work for that income, regardless if you’re doing design work from your laptop or hand-crafting chocolate teapots.

        Knowing how much minimum hours you need to work, every month, to pay the running costs for business (and for your personal life), or how to set the price for each teapot, can be a cold shower for some people, but can also give peace of mind.

        Alison once recommended this for freelancers, to build up a nest egg where you can deny new work and still live on the nest egg for x months.

        In the same way, you should plan x vacation days per month or year for your own mental health, and play around with the flexibility you have for each week/ month on what works best for you (a big bonus).

        Once you know that you need at least 3 consulting jobs/ 20 teapots to sell per month, you can try out whether to finish everything in a rush in the first 10 days and then laze off, or work steady 8 hours per day (just in increments to accomodate your bio-rhythm).

        Maybe you can pull of “work 60 hours a week and make so much money I can retire after 5 years”, though I doubt that model still works today; but long-term burnout is prevented by regular time off for humans, which self-employed people are, too.

    3. Too Long Til Retirement*

      You have all the flexibility in the world!! 4 day work week? You can do it! Want to take a month off and travel? Also yes! 4 day weekend once a month? Yup. Your possibilities are endless since you are the boss. Want to go grocery shopping on a Tuesday morning when everyone else is at the office? You can!

      I am more than a little envious of the people who can be entrepreneurs and set their own schedules. It seems like the best of both worlds: earning income but also being able to work when, where, and how you want.

    4. Chris*

      Similarly, I’m a 1099 contractor. No PTO or sick leave (or any other benefits for that matter). On the other hand, I get paid a very good hourly rate and have an enormous amount of flexibility in when, where, and how much I work.

      For instance, I took a week off to go see the eclipse. I didn’t get paid for that time but didn’t have to worry about saving up vacation days or not having that time if I wanted to take vacation in the future. I got to my eclipse viewing spot a few hours early, so I was able to pull out my laptop and put in (and bill for) a couple of hours work while I waited for the eclipse to start.

      This may not be for everyone. I’m fortunate that my financial and life situations can accommodate swings in income from month to month.

  13. Manders*

    I work at a public university. The pay is lower than private sector, but our leave policy is fantastic, including 2 full weeks of winter break, plus about 9 other holidays throughout the year.

    1. DisneyChannelThis*

      Same! We’re university affiliated (data center) and they flat out said they cant match industry pay but we accrue 16 hrs (2 days) PTO a month, can max out at like 350 hrs stored PTO (~7 weeks). So in theory if I keep saving my days I could take a month of summer vacation :D :D :D Plus we get a handful of federal holidays on top of that.

    2. Peon*

      Same here. We get the days between Christmas and New Years off on top of our vacation/sick days (which are already generous if you’ve been there awhile) and it’s fantastic.

      I stay because of the leave policies, really. 2 vacation days per month, 120 hours of sick time per year, up to 5 days off over the winter break, and 7 paid holidays because they give us the Friday after Thanksgiving. Better than I ever got at previous jobs.

    3. Blue Pen*

      Yes, similar. I work at a private university, and while the pay here is decent—not the best, but definitely not awful—the leave here is terrific, and I can’t imagine giving it up.

    4. Meg*

      Mine has recently been giving us mondays or fridays off in the summer! While the pay absolutely sucks in academia, the benefits are certainly helping.

    5. online millenial*

      Same here. I get 30 vacation days (after working for over a decade), 15 sick, 3 personal, plus we’re closed for another 15 holidays/winter recess. I could make more money working private sector but the benefits in higher ed are too good for me to ever leave.

    6. Manders*

      I’ve worked at the same place since 2006. I currently have 1141 accrued sick leave hours, since those roll over every year (and I never use mine). I also currently have 267 vacation hours accrued, and I’ve already taken a week off this year. And another good thing about working here – which I know from experience – is that they pay you your full salary for jury duty.

    7. Mostly Managing*

      I’m at a public university, but new to the staff.
      I get 2 weeks vacation per year.
      Because I only work 0.6 time (3 days/week) I actually get 6 days of vacation per year, not 10!

      However, the university shuts down for a week between Christmas and New Years, and that’s also paid. So I guess it’s 3 weeks, but they tell me when one has to be. It’s a week I’d want anyway (school aged kids) so I’m ok with it.

    8. basically functional*

      Another public university employee here (staff, not faculty), and same. I hadn’t actually added up all my leave before, but I get:

      19 holidays including a 2-week winter break
      21 vacation days (can carry over up to 42 days)
      10 sick days (no carryover)
      5 personal days (no carryover)

      That is 11 weeks of leave! (Granted, I have more than most having worked here 15 years.) Higher ed gets a bad rap, but I feel very fortunate to work where I do. My pay is actually pretty good, too.

  14. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

    We can’t rollover any of our PTO (I’m working on getting that changed) so I put that I lost it- but our company pays us for any PTO we don’t use at the end of the year.

    I also put how many days we have if you break our hours out by days. So, for example, I have 140 hours, but we work 10 hour days, so that’s 14 days. We work 4 day a week shifts, so that’s 3.5 weeks by our shifts/schedules. We’re also allowed to take half days, so some people end up with odd amounts like 95, depending on what they take when.

    1. Greta*

      Ours rolls over, but there’s a limit. That limit increases as the amount accrued in a year increases.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        Lol! My team is very collaborative and often help each other figure out errors. It’s usually something like typing 2.031 into a spreadsheet instead of 2.0031. And we’ve all had multiple calculus and statistics courses. This is where the mistakes happen. 2 x 3? Obviously, it’s five, lol.

  17. Matt R*

    I have up to 6 months full pay sick leave so I didn’t include it in my PTO.
    I also put myself as not using all my vacation PTO because I always carry over the max 5 days to use in the next quarter. I haven’t actually lost any days.

    1. Polyhymnia O’Keefe*

      That’s basically what I did for sick leave. I get 130 days (paid at varying levels of days at 100% and days at 70% based on tenure), so it’s not unlimited, but it would really skew my numbers to include it in my PTO. I considered including the number of days paid at 100% (for me, right now, that’s 25 days in a calendar year, and then the next 105 days at 70%), but that’s also not quite accurate.

  18. beep beep*

    My company allows us to use 5 of our 10 yearly sick days as personal days. I can also purchase up to 40 extra hours of PTO (vacation time) a year, which I typically do since it’s a small expense per paycheck that I can handle carrying, and the extra week is so useful!

  19. MerrilyWeScrollAlong*

    Just a note, Alison. Question 5 requires you to enter a number for your paid sick days, but tells you to skip to question 10 if you have unlimited sick days. I have unlimited but had to put a number, so I just put a bunch of zeros. You may want to readjust (or tell those skipping to question 10 to put in a specific number so results aren’t skewed, etc.)

  20. NCA*

    Does anyone else have a company that allows them to buy/sell PTO days for extra money? We can buy up to a week and sell I believe 2 weeks.

    1. Rosemary*

      This is something I am going to approach with my (small) employer. I would like to take more vacation this year than I have, and would be willing to take it unpaid (which I assume is the same as “buying” it)

    2. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

      How does buying extra PTO work? We have PTO Buyout where if you need extra cash, you can buy some of your PTO for straight cash. But then you lose the PTO, so it’s a trade off. But we also have several people who burn through their PTO pretty quickly- I wonder if they would like the option to purchase more.

      (We pretty much give people unlimited unpaid leave if need be. We really need to start cracking down on that because some people are taking advantage of that policy.)

      1. beep beep*

        For me it comes out of each paycheck similarly to my health benefits (I elect to take it during benefits enrollment each year) so I accrue it at the rate that I “pay” for it, and if I don’t use some in the year it gets cashed back out to me.

        1. Resident Catholicville, U.S.A.*

          That’s interesting. I don’t fully understand and I’m trying to wrap my head around it.

      2. The Provisional Republic of A Thousand Eggs*

        At Old Workplace, we could get our overtime either as money or as time off, whichever suited us best at the moment. Dunno how common this is here (Finland). I just know that I never worked anywhere where you could “buy” PTO.

    3. Other Meredith*

      We can cash in a certain number of sick days per year, the number is dependent on how many sick hours we still have. We can’t buy any.

    4. Nounsy*

      Yes – my company has this (just added it I think this year). We can purchase one or two weeks of additional vacation (with manager approval) and they’ll take it out of your pay across all your paychecks but then you get paid for those days as for regular vacation. If you don’t use them by the end of the year they’ll pay it back to you. The only downside is that because of that you can’t roll any vacation over (normally 5 vacation days can be carried over into Q1, but normal vacation days must be used before these and these have to be used by the end of the year or they’ll get paid back)

      1. Nounsy*

        I should add we don’t have any ability to sell PTO (beyond getting back the money for the extra you’ve bought if you don’t use it), only to buy

    5. Beth**

      Yes, we can buy extra vacation up to a total of 38 days. So this is between 7 and 12 extra days depending on how many days you roll over (roll-over is up to 5 days). We can also sell back 2 days of core vacation leave.

    6. Tx_Trucker*

      At my company, everyone can sell up to 5 days. After 5 years on the job you can sell a maximum of 2 weeks. PTO can only be sold in December, no exceptions.

  21. I should really pick a name*

    Technically didn’t use all my PTO, but that’s only because I didn’t need to use all my sick days.

  22. Frieda*

    I work as a professor in higher ed and f/t faculty do not have vacation days or paid sick leave, but we can take days off if we are sick without losing pay. We only report the hours during which we were unable to teach class as “sick leave” but there is not a specific number of days we are given (although I get the impression that there is an unspoken low limit). The expectation is that you take no vacation time during the academic year and that if possible you convert any class missed due to illness to an online (asynchronous if necessary) class. When guidelines for Covid recommended 5 days we were permitted exactly five days off from teaching beginning the day you tested positive (so that was Day 1.) To avoid coming in while I was still sick and presumably contagious I taught synchronous classes online from home for a few days.

    We cannot donate sick days to the sick day bank for others to use.

  23. Nay*

    #5 being a required answer is confusing – I have unlimited PTO (well, we call it “open” PTO because there’s some general common-sense parameters…so it says to skip to 10, but you can’t skip 5! Should I put 365? That doesn’t really make sense because, well, per common sense parameters we can’t take 365 days off…

  24. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

    Our contract has X days of fully paid sick time and A LOT of days of sick time paid at 75%. Do I count all of that or just the fully paid days?

  25. Taxlady*

    I’m fully self employed so I get no paid days per year, should I even fill this out? Wouldn’t want to skew it. obviously I can take as much unpaid time off as I want, it’s very different than a crappy employer who gives no vacation days.

  26. I'm just here for the cats!*

    We accrue sick time each pay period and it rolls over. In fact, when you retire your sick leave goes towards your health care costs I guess. So before Covid there were people who kept saying never to use your sick time. Which is great if you’ve been here 10 years and you get 4 weeks of vacation and you hardly get sick or don’t have medical issues.

    1. Jenny*

      Ours is the same way and I’ve known people close to retirement that use vacation instead of sick time for that reason.

  27. ThatGirl*

    Hopefully I filled it out helpfully – I get 15 pto days, plus 12 holidays but 2-3 per year are floating holidays. And we have unlimited/untracked sick time, but that’s separate from vacation time.

  28. I edit everything*

    These surveys are depressing for me. I’m solidly middle aged, and I’m in a “don’t work, don’t get paid” part-time job, combined with freelancing. All my answers would be 0. I have a great boss and tons of flexibility, and I’m grateful for that, but I’d love to be able to take a day off without thinking “But I need the money.”

  29. Vax'ildan is my disaster bicon*

    How would we classify something like school vacations for those who work in education? Are those “holidays,” since they’re paid time off that must happen on specific days?

    1. Rara Avis*

      I skipped those questions because I couldn’t face the math. My salary is prorated over 52 5-day weeks. So technically I get paid for every weekday of the year, whether it’s a school day or not. But that would look like a heck of a lot of paid vacation.

      I was even too lazy to count up the number of federal holidays we get off. Labor Day, Presidents’ Day, MLK Day, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving? I feel like there are more Mondays with no school, but I can’t think of them. (We don’t take Indigenous Peoples Day, Veterans’ Day, or Good Friday, although many public schools in the area do.)

    2. T'Pol*

      I’m a teacher as well and I counted spring break and Christmas break as paid vacation but not summer break. Our pay over the summer is 1/12 of our salary that the school board holds back so we get a consistent paycheque. If you don’t work the full school year, your pay for the summer will be less and if you resign they can pay your summer pay as a lump sum if you prefer. You can also opt out of having your pay spread over 12 months instead of 10.

      That being said, the expectation in my school district is that you take vacations when school is closed so we have 3 personal days each school year.

    4. I am Emily's failing memory*

      My company shuts down for a week every summer for “staff appreciation.” I counted those 5 days towards the “Other” box along with community service days and floating holidays.

    5. KatCardigans*

      I counted spring and winter breaks with all the “bank holidays,” since we’re paid for them but don’t get to choose the day. I didn’t include summer at all, though—we’re not technically paid for it, we can just choose to split our paycheck over 12 months rather than 10. I don’t feel like that counts the same way.

  30. thatsjustme*

    I work in an industry where job hopping (and layoffs) are really common, and I’ve always resented the way employers want to start everyone off with the standard two weeks’ vacation + a week of sick time (or some similar combo) no matter how senior the position is or how experienced the employee is. I don’t mind that longtime employees get something extra for their loyalty, but when the baseline is so low to begin with, that’s an issue. That’s how it’s been everywhere I’ve worked, except for one job that had unlimited PTO. It sucks staring down 40 years old and still never having more than 15 days off in a year.

    1. Perfectly normal-size space bird*

      I’m definitely jealous of people who have multiple weeks of PTO granted and have high rollover caps. My current industry is notoriously low on benefits and though 15 days of vacation + sick is available, most of us don’t manage to accrue enough sick leave to reach that amount. But I also feel grateful I even have this much because this is the best benefits I’ve ever had.

      My field (different from my current job) is very low pay but high benefits if you are lucky enough to get a position higher than entry-level. My previous job which was in that field, was entry-level and I had zilch benefits. The job before that one (another entirely different field) just didn’t tell people they had PTO available so no one ever used it. When asked, there was a lot of “we’ll get back to you” that just died out. When the company had a reorg and terminated everyone at my location, we found out we all had years of accrual. Naturally, they didn’t pay it out.

    2. Maglev to Crazytown*

      While most government agencies allow equivalency for setting leave accrual rates, not all do. That was my first one, then got another opportunity that was my dream one 6 months later (had applied at the same time!). I couldn’t change my accrual rate once in the system. I am the lone person with >20 years hobbling along at 4 hrs vacation per pay period until my 3 year mark where I jump to 6. It still works out better than private with the 4 hrs a pay period of sick leave, tons of holidays and ability to accrue comp leave rather than eating those hours as a private salary employee.

  31. Rodstar*

    I’m a little lost because of my country, I guess. In France, we have 5 mandated weeks of paid time off. (so ~25 days per year, as well as 10 holiday days)
    But since we’re capped at 35h per week by law, per out contract if we’re going over that, the excess time is to be compensated as “RTT”, which are basically additional vacations. For example I’m at 38h/week so I gain ~10 more days per year. Are these counted as paid time off too ?
    Also our sick time is deducted from our initial 5 weeks so I suppose it gets lumped in unlimited sick time ?

    1. Jen*

      It’s impossible to design a survey to cover all the possibilities in all the countries.

      But, speaking as someone who works with French people, for us your RTT is the same as paid time off. We just think you get more PTO than us.

    2. Beth**

      In the UK we tend to call this “time off in lieu” or sometimes TOIL. I don’t think of it as leave because you are getting back time you shouldn’t have worked. In my previous job, I occasionally had to work on a weekend day (e.g. to speak at a public event) and I had the option of taking paid overtime (a time and a half) or TOIL. I went for the extra pay every time.

    3. münchner kindl*

      Germany, so I looked up what the law is once “sick leave paid by employer” runs out after 6 weeks, and officially the sick leave paid then by the health insurance is limited – to 78 weeks in a 3 year block, for the same sickness.

      Which I interpreted as “unlimited” in the context of mainly US practices.

  32. Audrey*

    My job has 10 days PTO, but recently I changed to salaried so I no longer have to take sick leave unpaid as long as I work a bit in that week.

  33. Bruce*

    Question 5 says “if you have unlimited time off skip to question 10” but it won’t let me leave question 5 blank. Looking at the other comments I see I’m not the only one asking about this.

  34. Water-person*

    The answers are missing an option of have been at your current job/position for 1-2 years (which is the case for me)! I selected 2-4 years of employment at my current job, but our number of vacation days goes up after 3 years.

    1. GloryBee*

      Yeah, me too. The options in a lot of the questions really don’t work for this kind of job. Not sure if it’s different in the US, but in my work as a teacher in the UK, things don’t fit into these categories.

      I am paid to work 195 days a year. My time off is all school holidays, which encompasses bank holidays etc. I do not have any control over the dates of these holidays. I do not get personal days. If I am off sick, I get full pay for the first six months of any sickness related absence, and half pay for a further six months (after I have worked for at least 18 weeks – which I passed decades ago). If I am off sick for longer it is possible, depending on the circumstances, for the Director of Education to extend the period of sick pay of appropriate. My job is unionised, I am 48, and I have been a full time secondary teacher for 25 years.

    2. ope_sorry*

      At least by me, summers are forced, unpaid leave without the opportunity to apply for unemployment

    3. Proud Union Educator*

      it’s not paid time off. For example in my district we work/are paid for a 180 day contract + up to 4 extra work days, so school breaks and even federal holiday “days off” during the year aren’t actually *paid* days off for us.

      we also have only “general leave” days which are specifically not vacation, but can be used for either sick or “personal day” type situations. it is a little tricky indeed.

  36. Nusuth*

    I recently made a lateral transfer (with my entire team) to a new company, where my grandboss said we would be “very happy” with our new offers. I….was not (but better than losing a job), for several reasons including that my total PTO went from 20 days to 15 (inclusive of sick and vacation). When I asked if they would consider increasing it (after getting a no on salary), their response was a genuinely surprised “oh, no, we don’t believe in that.” I’m steaming just remembering it!

    1. Pine Tree*

      Oh man, if you ever leave, please give no notice because “you don’t believe in giving notice”

      And before then, there’s so many other times you could use that.

      Volunteer for some dumb committee? Sorry, I don’t believe in that.
      Unscheduled overtime? Sorry, I don’t believe in that.
      Sit in another long, pointless meeting? Sorry, I don’t believe in that.

  37. Peon*

    The question about whether my PTO rolls over stumped me – vacation and sick time are separate buckets for me, and vacation rolls over but sick time does not. Last year I used all my vacation and only some of my sick, so I answered that it did NOT roll over, but only because of which kind of PTO was left.

  38. Governmint Condition*

    Trying to decide if a floating holiday should count as a public holiday or “other” leave, since you can use it whenever you want, including breaking it up into pieces.

    1. JHunz*

      Personally, I included it with paid holiday time since my employer doesn’t roll over floating holidays like it does other PTO.

    2. Blame It On The Weatherman*

      I put my floating holiday as added to Personal Days. If you don’t have personal days I’d add it to vacation time, since there’s not much difference.

      1. Broken Lawn Chair*

        My personal days don’t roll over so I would count a non rolling over floating holiday with those. If it rolls over I’d probably count it as vacation even though officially we can’t carry over vacation.

  39. FuzzFrogs*

    My PTO situation can’t really be put into the form above, so I’ll add it down here.

    Librarian, unionized position, 10 years of experience. We get 11 scheduled paid holidays per year, and 3 floating holidays. Holidays cannot roll over, year to year.

    Sick leave and vacation leave are one pot of PTO, earned per two-week pay period. There’s a few tiers based on years of experience, starting at earning 8 hours a pay period, then 8.5, then 9.5, then 10.5. At 10 years, I just started earning 9.5 per pay period.

    All PTO rolls over and accrues, no matter how long you’ve had it. Certain workaholics have literally thousands of years. There used to be a PTO donation system where these workaholics could give out their excess, but that ended. However, there is a cap on how much gets paid out when you leave the job.

    I am in the US and my position has no effect on the amount of PTO I get, excepting that it’s a full-time job; part-timers get a proportional amount of PTO.

  41. spcepickle*

    I earn vacation hour not days, because we have flexible schedules (want to work 4×10’s, 5×8’s, or my favorite of 9 hour days with every other Friday off – all super cool).
    I earn 12 hours of vacation time a month, I converted divided by 8 for the survey.

    Our holidays are full days off regardless of the number of hours you work (so it you work 10 hour days your holidays are worth 10 hours and if you work 8 hour days you holidays are worth 8 hours).

  42. A Poster Has No Name*

    I’m bitter that, for the year after I hit 20 years when I would have gotten an extra week of vacation, my company went to ‘unlimited’ vacation time.

    It feels like a bit of a pay cut, as that’s a benefit that won’t pay out in the case of layoffs. I absolutely still keep track and make sure I take at least as much as I would have had under the old system (5 weeks + 3 floating holidays. There was no rollover).

    1. Bruce*

      At least when my company went “unlimited PTO” they paid us for the accumulated hours we had. If you had 5 weeks per year I can see why “unlimited” may not seem as good. I’m lucky that I’m able to use it pretty freely, I understand it is often not as good as it sounds.

  43. lambchop*

    This is so interesting! My employer has a 9:80 schedule so I get every other Friday off (not sure how to categorize that in this survey – I rarely actually work 9 hours a day, but it’s not like those Fridays can stack/be taken whenever you want, so kind of a hybrid of vacation days and in-lieu time). We technically get 15 vacation days and unlimited sick time, with a paid shut-down between Christmas and New Year’s that doesn’t count against your PTO. In reality, you can take as much PTO as your manager is willing to approve, and there’s something wrong with the system where it never actually deducts from your balance, so when you leave you get an enormous payout (I think you can have up to 30 days banked). I recently came back for a new role at this company after working somewhere else for a couple of years – the work is very demanding and the pay isn’t great, but the benefits can’t be beat in our area.

    1. Person from the Resume*

      I would say those Fridays are not days off because you’re putting in 80 hours over the rest of the pay period. You just need to convert hours to days (8 hours = 1 day) if the survey is asking for days.

      OTOH I work a similar schedule and we’re supposed to be working those 9 hours and I put in 9 hours on Mondays – Thursdays.

    2. I am Emily's failing memory*

      I think to be considered “paid time off” it needs to represent hours/days where you are working fewer hours than you would in a typical pay period. I’d consider a 9/80 schedule to be something more like “flexible/alternative schedule,” not paid time off, because it is your usual hours rather than a reduction in hours below your usual.

  44. Burnzie*

    Can someone explain the (I assume USA concept) of having a certain number of sick days. I live in the UK for reference. In my experience if you’re sick, you’re sick, and you take as many days as required. If you hit certain trigger points your employer will meet with you to discuss occupational health referrals/other support to return to work. What happens in the USA if you are sick but have no sick days left? And does the system lead to the lucky healthy ones taking sick days for no reason just to use up their allowance?

    1. Blame It On The Weatherman*

      If you have no sick days left, you come to work sick or you get on a PIP/fired. Or some businesses might allow you to take unpaid sick days but that’s rare if they also offer any paid ones.

    2. Decidedly Me*

      You can start using your vacation days when sick leave is up at every company I’ve been at. Same for anyplace my friends have been at.

      1. Blame It On The Weatherman*

        True, that is often an option I forgot to mention, but some places you’ll still get in trouble for that. Because vacation days are supposed to be pre-scheduled, and if you’re calling in sick same-day and need to use vacation to do so, they would frown upon it.

      2. Burnzie*

        Your vacation days seem pretty limited already from what I read on here. So if you end up using them when you are sick you’ll get hardly any vacation days. Surely this in turn leads to stress and burnout as you have no break from work, leading the employee to become sick with the physical and psychological systems of stress, then needing more sick days, which they don’t have. A vicious cycle.

    3. Ace in the Hole*

      In the US, “sick leave” is paid for directly by the employer and covers 100% of your normal wages. If you’re sick and have no sick days left, you would typically cover the time with other forms of leave (vacation, personal days, etc) until you have no paid leave left. At that point, your employer stops paying you for time off. Then one of several things happens:

      1. You apply for short-term disability benefits from the government. The criteria and benefits vary depending on what state you live in – for example in my state, it covers 60-70% of your normal wages and there are options for short term, partial, and intermittent disabilities.

      2. If you don’t qualify for disability benefits, you continue taking time off without pay. Or,

      3. You come to work sick.

      All of this is for non work-related illnesses/injuries. If it’s a work-related condition, that is covered by a separate system.

    4. Justin*

      It really depends on the job.

      At my job we’d just take vacation days or go on short-term disability, which ever works best. But we’re understanding and we can all work remotely so it’s less of an issue (obviously you can still be sick at home, you get my point).

    5. Askew*

      Yeah, also in the UK and not sure about how to answer the sick leave question – we get a maximum of 5 weeks sick leave at full pay but it doesn’t roll over, and while we’re encouraged to use all our vacation days as one of our benefits sick leave is totally different. Most people in the company don’t know what the maximum time at full pay is because they’ll never get near to it in a normal year

    6. Zee*

      I’ve run out of sick time at multiple jobs and had to use vacation time. Sick time is also used for doctor’s appointments which add up pretty quickly. (Also for when your kids are sick or have doctor’s appointments.)

      A lot of people just go to work sick.

    7. UK Ltd*

      UK here as well – I wasn’t sure how to record it in the survey. I’m in the public sector so get 6 months full pay and then 6 months half pay for long term sickness, so basically I’ve never given sick leave any thought. When I was in the private sector it was a case of going on statutory sick pay or using an annual leave day.

      1. Beth**

        UK public sector here as well and I put it down as “unlimited” because by the time you get to six months of full pay and still go on to half pay after that, it’s at a level where it’s vanishingly rare to use all of it.

        When I was a union rep, I did deal with cases of people using the full six months, but really very few. I also had a friend at work who used up her six months with chemo — despite coming in between chemo rounds whenever she felt healthy enough to work. Sadly, she died before running through the six months of half pay.

      2. Dr Liseuse*

        I’m having the same issue. I work for a university and it’s 6 months full and 6 months half pay. I’ve also added up every single day I could theoretically be eligible under all my work policies and if I am simultaneously lucky/unlucky/very civic minded and take all my annual leave, there are 490 days of leave available to me in a year.

  45. Library Lady*

    Fun times when our new director realized that our organization hadn’t budgeted staff expenses properly and couldn’t actually afford to have everyone use their full PTO benefits each year…FT staff get 4 weeks of vacation but no one ever felt like they were able to take that much time off each year, so it was never fully used and the budget was never strained. Not sure if that was by design, incompetence, or both, but our new director was like “Yeah, that’s not good”

    1. Zee*

      Do you guys hire temps every time someone’s on vacation? How does someone being on PTO cost the company any more than their usual salary?

    2. I am Emily's failing memory*

      This is kind of confusing to me. Usually the financial liability with leave comes from employees who *don’t* take all their leave, because the unused leave must be paid out on separation which creates a cash liability on the books. If everyone used their full PTO every year, the company might not be able to get enough work done, but it shouldn’t affect the bottom line – the company is paying out the same cash salary either way, it’s just a matter of whether they internally count it as “pay for working” or “pay for not working.”

  46. Ace in the Hole*

    I followed directions and entered holidays separate from other time off, but I think that’s a misleading way to categorize it.

    I get 40 paid days off per year, officially categorized as 12 sick, 14 vacation, and 14 holidays. However, we’re open 365 days a year so all my holidays are floating – effectively the same as vacation. The only difference is a higher accrual cap for rollover on unused holidays. This is very common for US government workers with anything other than a standard M-F work schedule.

    The only reason I can see for separating holiday vs vacation is if we’re assuming that holidays are set times vs vacation which can be scheduled by the employee. But there are also plenty of employers that will close for certain days and force employees to use vacation time to cover it.

    Perhaps a better division would be “how many of your days off are you forced to take at a specific time?” vs “how many of your days off can you choose when to take?”

    1. lambchop*

      This is a great point – I have a 9:80 schedule so get every other Friday off/technically an extra 26 days of PTO a year, but they’re inflexible (can’t work one Friday in order to take 2 off in a row, etc). Distinguishing between PTO that’s taken when you want it vs. mandatory days off would be helpful.

      1. Lee the sql*

        I wouldn’t call those Fridays PTO anymore than i call Saturday and Sunday PTO because i work M-F. You are still working 80 hours over the 2 weeks

      2. Ace in the Hole*

        Those aren’t paid time off though – those are unpaid days off, just like Saturdays. You’re not getting paid for leave time, you just worked the same number of paid hours on a different day.

    2. Person from the Resume*

      Is it completely floating holidays? That you can save up and strong together?

      The federal government has a whole process that says if you have to work the designated federal holiday (which happens when people need to work 24/7 shifts) you get this other exact day off during the same pay period. The employee can’t choose their holidays.

      1. Ace in the Hole*

        Yes, completely floating – can be strung together with other days off, can be taken as full days or in hourly increments, can be saved and used in another pay period or even another year. We get floating holidays if we work on the holiday and also if the holiday falls on a day we’re not scheduled to work (“regular day off”). This is policy for my state’s employees and very common for local gov in my state too.

        The only differences between floating holidays and vacation time are that there’s no accrual cap on holiday rollover, but we don’t have the option to cash out saved holiday as bonus wages (which can be done with up to half our annual vacation days).

  47. Warrant Officer Georgiana Breakspear-Goldfinch*

    New policy as of a couple years ago: we get off “Election Day on all even-numbered years”.

    1. Caramel & Cheddar*

      Why even-numbered years? Or do you have elections in odd-numbered years too but they don’t want to give you those days off?

      1. Warrant Officer Georgiana Breakspear-Goldfinch*

        I’m in the US, so even years cover “both presidential and midterm Congressional elections.”

        1. Caramel & Cheddar*

          Right, but do you have any elections that are in odd-numbered years that aren’t given as a day off? Because if not, it seems weird to say “Election Day on all even-numbered years” if you could just say “Election Day.”

          But I know Americans vote for a ton of things other places don’t vote for, though, so I wasn’t sure if like Dog Catcher Voting Day is in odd-numbered years and they don’t give you that day off because it’s a more “minor” election day.

          1. Anecdata*

            Yeah, there’s usually /an/ election in off years with SOMETHING on the ballot – transit board or a city position, ballot measures, funding for the random mosquito control district you happen to live in. Plus there can be special elections. Add primaries, and I probably average “vote 2x a year every year”. It would certainly be nice for a company to give a day off for all of those but I would rather them give 1 day every 2 years covering more major elections; than not give /anything/ because they didn’t want to cover /everything/
            (and I’m lucky to live in a jurisdiction that makes it easy vote around my work schedule, with several options for early voting, flexible precinct locations, and mail-in)

          2. Shad*

            Some state and local elections take place on odd years, but the frequency of those depends entirely on the location involved and can’t really be generalized to the US as a whole. So a multi-location company may not want to deal with the headache of tracking who does or doesn’t have an odd-year election to take time off.

            1. I am Emily's failing memory*

              Yep, I know at least one state that elects its governor on a 5-year term so every other gubernatorial election is an odd year.

          3. Person from the Resume*

            The minor elections in odd numbered years don’t draw huge crowds so it’s easier to vote before or after work for them than a presidential election.

            A lot of the minor elections take place on Saturdays rather than Tuesdays (presidential and midterm Congressional elections).

          4. Nola*

            My state holds, on average, four elections a year. But, with the exception of the Federal elections which are on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November in even years, all other elections are held on Saturdays.

  48. GoldenHandcuffs*

    I think there are so many ways to structure paid time off. For example, at my company, everyone starts with 4 weeks of vacation. This does not include 14 holidays (closed between Christmas and New Years so that includes those days) and one floating day that used to be a holiday but now can be used anytime during the year. We are also closed over the 4th of July but we have to use our vacation to cover those days that are not the holiday. In your 5th year, you get a splash week, an extra week to use that year. In year 10, you bump up to 5 weeks/year and get a splash year. Every 5 years after, you get a splash week (15, 20, etc.) You can only roll over one week of vacation or it’s lost. So in my 10th year, I had 7 weeks of vacation. I had rolled over a week, I received my 5th week and my splash week, on top of the base of 4 weeks. And honestly it was hard to take it all. I managed by taking every Friday off during the summer but that ended up backfiring a little because I got pretty behind trying to cram 5 days of work in to 4 for several months.

    For paid sick leave, our city requires a minimum of 5 paid days but the reality is, we’re not required to log those days and the company doesn’t keep track unless it becomes an issue or if you are out for more than 5 consecutive days. If you are out for more than 5 consecutive days, it converts to short term disability until you can return or until it you hit the threshold for long term disability.

    I usually will take all but a week and roll that over. But some years I’ve taken everything.

  49. Apfelmuse*

    Dear Urbanists/ Urban Studies/ Geographers/ Planners.. what do you class yourself as in these ? I picked Consulting (tho the “business” part does not apply) and “governement affairs”, because we have many public clients. But we are a for profit company….
    thanks :)

  50. Blame It On The Weatherman*

    I’d be interested in a separate survey just for the US breaking this same data down by state. I’m estimating that my amount of time off might be a lotttt higher than e.g. someone in Nebraska or something. (In my case, 10 vac, 10 sick, 7 personal, 10 holidays)

  51. nothing to see here*

    There wasn’t a good way to include this since only numbers could be submitted, but my employer also “unofficially” gives us full weeks off to align with some of the holidays (3 weeks off which includes 4 of the official holidays), plus we get Summer Fridays in August. I didn’t include those in my total since they aren’t in policy but they have happened consistently the past few years.

  52. MoreInfo*

    There wasn’t a place to add commentary, but we do sometimes get extra paid holidays depending on where in the week they fall. (eg, if 4th of July is on Thursday, the company might give us Friday off too. Not always, though.)

  53. whyblue*

    I think some answers in the spreadsheet need a bit more context. For example, in Germany, if a bank holiday falls on a weekend, you basically lose it. So most years we have fewer days off than holidays on the calendar. Also, sick leave is mandated by law and the same for pretty much all employers. It’s also a bit more complicated…roughly 42 days fully paid by the employer per illness per year, with additional time (several months) at a lower pay rate paid by the health insurance. So, it’s not technically unlimited, but close enough.

    1. Jen*

      Yeah, Romania works pretty similarly, but I just filled it in with the number of holidays we would get off if they happened to fall during the work week… we don’t have “sick days” where you can just call in sick, you always need a doctor’s note, but I think you can take up to 3 months for “regular” sickness and up to a few years for things like cancer or caring for a dependent with cancer.

      1. Blame It On The Weatherman*

        That’s interesting, so if you just have a cold or flu, do you have to call your doctor just to take a single day off? Do people bother to do that, or do a lot of people just come to work sick in that case?

        1. münchner kindl*

          Depends. In Germany, the first three consecutive calendar days are usually without a note (employer can require one for the first day in special cases, but it’s very unusual).

          After the third day, a yellow doctors note is required. The thinking is that if you are sick enough for longer than 3 days, you should see a doctor anyway, so why not get a note on how long you must stay in bed?

          It’s actually two pieces: one with the diagnosis coded for the health insurance, and one with only the dates and name of employe for the employer.

          If you are still sick after 1 week of bedrest, or still contagious, you go again and get a follow-up note.

    2. Helga*

      I’m in Germany. I answered 60 days PTO (30 vacation and 30 sick days) and used the number of bank holidays in my state for this year. Last year was a bad year for bank holidays with Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve falling on a Sunday. 2022 was worse.
      Our vacation days can be rolled over (for a while, not unlimited anymore), but sick days can’t.
      When I worked in education in the US, sick days could be accrued and used for maternity leave or long illnesses. We also had a “sick bank” that many or all employees had contributed to – and that was used by a colleague with cancer. That wouldn’t be necessary here in Germany, but would also be impossible to implement because everybody has different insurance providers.

      1. UnCivilServant*

        So if the day a holiday falls on is a weekend you just don’t get it?

        I’ve personally never worked someplace where a weekend holiday wasn’t just observed on another day (either the adjacent workday or as a floating holiday).

        1. Helga*

          That’s correct. Holidays on Saturday are days off for people in retail who would have had to work because the shops are closed. For the rest of us they’re not observed on another day. Holidays that fall on Sunday are also “cancelled”.
          And: Oct 3 is a national holiday and Oct 31 is Reformation Day and is celebrated in the state I live in. And those two days fall on the same day of the week. So if it’s a Sat or Sun, we “lose” two holidays close to each other.

          1. münchner kindl*

            Heh. In mostly catholic Bavaria, we get Nov. 1st off, not reformation day. Except for the special year 2017 (500th anniversary) where the federal government gave everybody 31st Oct. off!

            I keep wondering what will happen to the special catholic holidays as the numbers of (officially registered) Christians declines; currently both catholic and protestants are about 30%, apparently atheists/others are not considered for this purpose, but it’s weird when official catholics drops down to 15% or so, and just because it’s more than protestants, we still get 15th August and Fronleichnam.

            I wish we would get away from the christian moving holidays, just put down spring holiday and summer holiday and give everybody 5 religious days, but with CSU and conservatives jumping on the populist bandwagon, unlikely to get through.

        2. Shad*

          Some of ours shift with federal observance if they fall on a weekend, but not all of them (so for example, if 12/24 is a Saturday, we lose the holiday for Christmas Eve, but the federal observance day for Christmas Day is still a paid holiday even though the actual date is a Saturday).
          Actually, thinking it through, Christmas Eve is the only paid holiday that isn’t either adjusted to federal observance or already tied to a weekday rather than strictly to a calendar date.

      2. Tau*

        I put “unlimited” because it felt closest. I don’t think 30 days sick time tells the whole story – for one, there’s the extra sick time at reduced pay paid by your health insurance, for another, it’s 30 days per illness. I actually went over 30 one disastrous year, but it was all fully paid because it was two separate illnesses with each being under six weeks.

    3. münchner kindl*

      German here, too, and compared to US, I put sick leave as unlimited – even if the 6 weeks-paid-by-employer run out, the health insurance takes over and pays for a long time.

      I was stumped on the “unionized” question – I’m a member of my union, but my workplace is not unionized in the way US does it. Nobody has to join the union to be hired, but the contracts the union fights for every 12-14 months are binding for all employees.

      I put “not unionized” because it’s more free than US unionized workplaces, but everybody gets the benefits of unions fighting.

  54. Yucky*

    My company has an additional terrible policy wherein holidays are accrued and taken out just like vacation and sick days, all in the same bucket. So, like, I can’t work on Christmas, a holiday I do not celebrate, and I must use 8 hours of PTO for Christmas, and it does count against my days of PTO for the year.

    (Yucky.)

  55. Enginerd*

    Not sure how this fits but I get comp time as well. I’m salaried exempt but any hours I work over 40 get added into my comp bank. At any time I can add hours from the bank to my timesheet and either take them as paid days off or get paid extra for the hours at whatever hourly rate my salary works out to. There’s a cap on the bank but I forget what it is and banked hours role over yearly but are adjusted after raises go into effect to account for the pay increase. The nature of our work if you get towards the end of a project and end up working long hours to implement it fills the bank and you take a week or two of comp time after the project to recharge before starting the next one. I typically don’t use much of my PTO because of this

  56. Grey*

    I never answer these because I can’t figure out where “property manager” fits into the Industry and Function categories. Real Estate isn’t there, nor is Management.

    2. Hlao-roo*

      “Property or Construction” is a category that seems like it might fit? If not, there’s also an “other” category at the bottom of both those questions, so you can always select that and write in what you think best describes the industry/function.

  57. Blame It On The Weatherman*

    I’m confused scrolling through at the people I’m seeing who list like, 160 days off or something (in the healthcare section there are a few). Is that just that they work part time or something?

    1. Hlao-roo*

      I scrolled through and the first few 150-160 days off that I saw were from people in the UK and Canada who have 120-130 sick days. I also saw a few 120-ish days off responses from the US who work in education/higher ed, so I assume that most/all of those days are school breaks.

      1. Hlao-roo*

        Just took a closer look and now I see there are two (at least) responses from the US in Health Care that have 160 total days off, 160 vacation days. I am also curious about those responses!

        1. Blame It On The Weatherman*

          I’m wondering if they meant to say 16? In the US that’s far more realistic than 160 lol

    2. I should really pick a name*

      I’m guessing they listed hours. That would be 4 weeks of vacation.

      1. KTM*

        Yes, I posted below that I (stupidly) made this error. I always think of PTO in hours and just didn’t read the survey closely enough. Sorry everyone!

      2. Mim*

        Thank you for putting together this survey!

        Next time around I’d love it if there were a third option for whether we lost or rolled over extra PTO at the end of the year. I lost some, and rolled over the rest, since we have a limit on how much can roll over. I think that a rollover limit is pretty typical when rollover is allowed. I chose the rolled over option, since I rolled over a lot more than I lost, and it feels like the point of the question was whether your employer allows rollover. However, I’d also like to know how many other folks were in a situation like mine, where they are so overworked that they were less stressed out by losing benefits than taking time off. Because it’s nice to have company in one’s misery. *sigh*

        Another suggestion for next time is that I wonder if this would work better if there were completely separate surveys/datasets for people with unlimited PTO vs. those of us with regular set numbers of days. I know that has its own complications (including when folks have unlimited vacation but not sick days, or vice verse), but overall the data might be a lot cleaner if the questions could be better tuned to those very different models of PTO.

        I also wonder if it might be good to have a question about whether one’s job is seasonal in some way? Thinking of teachers, for example — their numbers might look a lot different, and it would be nice to have the ability to filter the data to exclude those, or only look at those, depending on one’s interests.

        Anyway, hoping to have some fun playing with this data soon. :-)

    3. IEanon*

      I’m in higher ed and we receive 1040 hours of sick leave when we start (no accrual period!). It made my total days look insane, so I reported it as unlimited, because that feels more accurate to real life usage.

  58. ecnaseener*

    One thing I couldn’t include (no relevant free-text fields) was that I have 7 “holidays,” but they’re all floating. They’re taken out of the PTO bank, and if I want to work a holiday and save the PTO I can do that. I counted them as holidays rather than vacation since the default expectation is that I won’t work those days ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  59. Justin*

    There’s numbers and there’s the culture around them.

    My numbers (which I also filled in the survey) are 15 vac (until 3 years, then it’s 20), 20 sick, 4 personal. Personal do not roll over, the others do (though there’s an accumulation cap).

    We get all the normal holidays. We also get the final week of the calendar year off (and we’re just Closed).

    But. That only tells part of the story.

    Because it is official codified policy you don’t have to take PTO for part of your day if you fulfill your duties, unless it’s more than 4 hours. We’re all allowed to work remotely (or come in), we just have to let them know what we’re planning to do. We get bonuses (if the company is doing well; it has been for the last several years). And it’s a nonprofit that’s doing work I feel proud of.

    My last job, not only was it butts in seats but if you got out of that seat they wanted to know where that butt was going.

    We were named the #4 large nonprofit to work for this week by the nonprofit times (so you can figure out who we are if you really want to) and I fully agree, even if those PTO numbers are “less than Europe.”

      1. Justin*

        (I wish we could edit, lol)

        Plus we close at 2 pm on every Friday before a Monday holiday, and every Friday from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

        1. Justin*

          Add yourself to the mailing list which sends out emails when new jobs are posted. My colleague is leaving next week, so there will be more.

          Many can be done entirely remotely (they just have to list a location in case the person wants to come into an office).

  60. Sciencer*

    All the higher ed folks putting in huge numbers for paid vacation days (20-50…) — are you counting non-contracted time? I’m on a 10-month contract but I don’t count the 2 months off as paid leave because… it’s not. I’m not technically working during that time, or getting paid.

    My university has 0 vacation hours for faculty. We get about 15 sick days per year and can roll over up to 720 hours of sick leave, though no one really seems to track that (I only actually enter sick leave if I miss multiple teaching days in a row). The expectation is that we do not take days off during the academic year, aside from the 10 campus holidays. I’m fortunate to have a department head who supports the occasional time off for things like a wedding or once-in-a-lifetime trip that falls during the school year, but technically I don’t have a way to request that as leave.

    1. Ann O'Nemity*

      Higher ed staff here. We get real vacation time, but are also expected to work 8-5 through the summer.

      Faculty with academic year appointments (ie 10 month contracts) do not accrue vacations. Faculty with 12-month appointments accrue vacation at the same rate as staff, but cannot use it while classes are in session.

    2. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      Same as Ann O’Nemity, I’m higher ed non-academic staff, no contract. I work the entire calendar year except when the whole university is closed, like winter break — but even then, I might be required to work in an emergency. Salary is not really competitive with an equivalent industry position, so it makes up for it with the huge amount of time off that I never had when I worked in industry. Some of this is because if the students and faculty are away, I really can’t accomplish much, so might as well take a vacation. But there are times that I am blocked from taking vacation — like the weeks leading up to graduation, or welcome week in the Fall.

      Faculty at my org have a totally different leave structure than I do and their contracts depend on what level of faculty — full tenure, associate, assistant, adjunct, instructor etc. and they can have more than one contract that are paid and accrue PTO at all different rates (for example: Dr. Smith might be an Assistant Chair, Professor, Principle Researcher, and a non-faculty position like Director of Community Outreach). I don’t envy our payroll people.

    1. Lina*

      I’ve got close to that. 18 days PTO but 19 days mandatory unpaid furlough days (18-19=-1). Luckily I have 4 floating holidays so I can have 3 days PTO.

        1. Anecdata*

          More common in the public sector and usually when there’s a budget crunch/not enough funding to be open as many days as planned. So you do something like: “The DMV is closed every remaining Friday in the fiscal year, so you have those days off but unpaid”. Then if you actually want to be paid for those days, you have to cover them with PTO (sometimes this is optional, you can choose to take it unpaid; and sometimes it’s required to use PTO).

          It can happen in private companies too; but I think a more common situation is the office is closed due to bad weather, but you’re required to take PTO for the day. It is definitely a policy employees don’t like, but it is legal

        2. Lina*

          I work as a contractor, and the client where I am assigned requires all contractors to take mandatory unpaid furlough days before and after each US bank holiday. So for Memorial Day Monday, for example, the Friday before and the Tuesday after are both unpaid and we are not allowed to on work those days. We are also not allowed to work extra hours in the week to make up missed time. We can take vacation days, as Anecdata notes, to get paid for them.

  62. Sam*

    Just sharing because it always astounds me as a non-unionized person working for a small non-profit.

    My unionized mom got 17 days of sick days per year, which rolled over indefinitely. After 15 years of service, she was diagnosed with cancer and took an entire year of sick leave off – at her normal pay rate with all the sick days she’d banked. She never had to deal with the hassle of short-term disability leave. I cannot fathom this kind of power.

    1. BellyButton*

      Wow! That is amazing. I wish it was that way for everyone. I hope your mom is doing well :)

    2. Ace in the Hole*

      I’m non-union local gov, but similar situation… we have no accrual cap on sick leave or floating holiday credit, and a very generous vacation accrual limit.

      Longtime coworker recently took off over 6 months for a health emergency, came back, and then almost immediately had to take another 2 months for a different health emergency – all at normal pay rate from banked leave.

  63. Lina*

    I get 8 paid bank holidays and PTO for sick/vacation…but also have 19 mandatory unpaid furlough days in my job as a contractor.

    But this survey made me realize that the 4 floating holidays + 18 PTO days (vacation/sick) -19 unpaid furlough days = only 3 paid PTO days of my choice per year. (Assuming I use PTO and floating holidays to get paid for the furlough days.) Bummer!

  64. BellyButton*

    Thank you so much for doing these polls and thank you to all the people who participate. I actually use them in my work! I use them to cross check the information I get from the compensation experts and because we have unlimited PTO I run reports to see how much time people are taking and try to calibrate what I think is “normal” I am super concerned that in our fast paced industry and high performing company that people aren’t taking time off. Only once has it come up that someone was taking time off without proper coverage.

  65. History Nerd*

    I’d be interested to know how much PTO people actually use compared to what they’re ostensibly provided, too. For instance, I accrue 6 hours every 2 weeks, with an accrual cap of 260, but there’s no way for me to use all of that time in one year. It’s just too hard to take much time off – I do try, but since my work is heavy on deadlines, that can be more stressful than it’s worth so I typically have about 100-150 hours available at any given time.

    1. UnCivilServant*

      It’s not easy, and takes pre-planning, but I’ve thusfar managed to avoid losing any of my leave to over-accrual.

    2. Zee*

      Any time I take time off, I end up having to work extra to finish everything before/after I leave (not just at my current job). I don’t really know why the powers that be can’t quite grasp that if you want to give people 2 weeks’ vacation, you have to build their job around 50 weeks’ worth of work, not 52.

    3. tann*

      I would also be interested in knowing this! I accrue one day a month (so 12/year) but can only take time off in May, so I can’t actually use it all unless I want to skip half the month at once.

      (yes, I’m job searching)

        1. tann*

          Just that we’re super understaffed. There are three people who have to cover 77 hours a week (which is terrible, I do not recommend it) but during the summer (May, June, July) we’re closed weekends and nights so it’s only 50. One person being out throws everything out of whack for days but instead of hiring anyone else they just assign when we’re allowed to ask off. May is “my” vacation month.

          Last year we had a hospitalization and a wedding on the same weekend and I worked four days totally solo. Not fun!

  66. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

    Holidays are fiddly. We have six officially, but the time for them is included in the PTO bucket because either due to scheduling (hospital system) or with manager approval, folks may work on the official holidays and save the PTO for another day of their choosing instead. (In administrative areas that are not involved in direct patient care, PTO has to be requested for the official holiday but it’s pretty much guaranteed approval.)

    I also wasn’t sure how to include this as it’s not automatic yearly, but all our benefit-eligible team members are allowed once per 12-month rolling period 2 weeks of paid time off that does not come out of PTO (and they don’t have to use their PTO before using this benefit), for a situation that would be FMLA-eligible on themself. (The idea is to cover the 2 week waiting period on our short-term disability program, which is a base 50% salary and TMs can choose to pay additional premium to increase it to 66%, but the benefit can be used even if you aren’t following through into STD for like a one time surgery or something.)

  67. mytummyhurtsbutimbeingbraveaboutit*

    Would have liked wfh to be included…many days that would be pto can be solved with a wfh schedule

    1. Zee*

      I definitely use less sick time now that I have a job I can wfh for! Which may or may not be a good thing. Good because I don’t burn through all of my sick leave and have to use vacation time. Bad because it encourages me to not actually take time off to rest when I need it.

    2. Alisaurus*

      Agreed. My job is officially 3 days home + 2 days in-office, but we’re allowed to WFH any day we don’t feel 100% to coming in. So stomach bug = full sick day, sniffles during cold season = WFH.

  68. TimeEnoughAtLast*

    I filled out the form, but feel compelled to overshare. At our place, leave accrues month to month so, each month we get 9.34 hours of sick leave, and that leave rolls over forever. I’m salaried, so only have to use leave for full-day absences. Vacation time accumulates at 13.34 hours per month (after 15 years of service) and can roll over to accumulate 360 hours. Additional hours over that are lost as they are earned.

  69. Magnus Archivist*

    We (nonprofit) accrue vacation days at 1.25 per month to total 15 a year, but we don’t get them all at once. We also have separate vacation and personal/wellness — personal/wellness were mashed together a few years ago I think to make it easier to use wellness (sick) days for preventative care instead being forced to use vacation days.

  70. Hawk*

    Me, trying to figure this out: well, they really hide this, don’t they?
    Also me: is this math right? This can’t be right.
    Me, after finding the actual documentation: thank goodness for my full time years and never using my leave the first few years.

    The best thing about my leave is that unused annual leave rolls over into sick leave. The worst thing is that I’m part time and I don’t accrue much.

  71. KLCtheBookWorm*

    Okay, these questions did not give space to explain how we do leave for my state’s government civil service jobs. I work for government and part of the compensation is earning Sick Leave and Annual Leave (everything that is not special circumstances or Sick Leave) that you spend to be out of the office and still get paid. How much leave you earn is calculated by how long your service with that state has been. I work 80 hours in 2 weeks and earn 7.384 hours in each. (I’m paid every two weeks so this is how my pay stub is calculated). Holidays are paid and not pulled from these leave buckets.

    This time rolls over throughout your state service and you can trade in blocks for money when you retire with the state, so that encourages people to not spend it frivolously. But it isn’t unlimited. If a catastrophic illness hit me that caused me to use up all of my banked Sick Leave, I would have to work with HR to use FMLA, Annual Leave, or a donated pool of leave from generous coworkers (I’ve heard of all three being used in my career).

    It doesn’t have any limits. In fact some retirees have enough leave banked to get the payout and then take off weeks before their official retire date. Currently, I have 147 days in Annual Leave and 247 days in Sick Leave and have taken 4 days Annual Leave (for a vacation with Mardi Gras which is a holiday for us) and planning to take another 4 days in May when my nephew graduates. Sick Leave use is at 14.25 hours year to date for doctors’ appointments.

  72. Orange You Glad*

    We have a separate bucket of “VTO” or Volunteer Time Off that is separate from our general PTO (sick time and vacations) and cannot be rolled over, but still an important part of our compensation package. I put this time under “Other”.

  73. Miss Hoover*

    This is tough when you work in education because (at least as it has been explained to me), our salaries only cover days worked and do not account for the summer. It’s just evenly distributed throughout the year. I don’t know how that factors into things like spring break or religious holidays.

  74. Good Enough For Government Work*

    1. What on earth is a ‘personal day’?

    2. Is there a way to include flexi leave? If I work over my contracted hours, I can bundle the extra time together and take it as up to two extra paid days off a month.)

    1. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      Some employers don’t make a distinction between vacation and sick leave so it’s all just Personal Time Off or PTO. It’s paid time not at work and it doesn’t matter why.

      I would think your flexi leave would go in the Other category.

    2. Blame It On The Weatherman*

      A personal day is not always pre-scheduled (unlike vacation) but it’s for use when you’re not literally sick and need a day off for e.g. –
      -Take dog to the vet
      -Home repairs
      -Take spouse to an appointment

      Stuff like that. You’re not pretending to have a cough, you can say, “Hey, a tree fell on my fence and I have to deal with it so I’m taking a personal day today.” (Whereas, a pre-scheduled doctor’s appt for you yourself would be charged to sick time.)

      At my job, you can also use your bank of personal time to pay for pre-scheduled vacation days or sick leave too, so it’s basically an extra “swing” bank of time that can be used for either bucket. And personal time doesn’t roll over for me, whereas sick and vacation do, so I always use that up first. Like if I were to be gone a whole week, I could put that in our time system as three personal days and two vacation days, even if it’s all for the same “vacation.” But that’s not allowed at a lot of places.

      I use personal days a lot for art projects / working on more elaborate gifts for people /if I just need a day to logistically plan life stuff.

      1. beep beep*

        When I was working on changing my name (very strict requirements in my state), I used a LOT of personal time off that year on appointments at the courthouse and DMV and Social Security office, etc. It was very useful to have.

    3. fine-tipped pen aficionado*

      In my org, personal days are leave that is not accrued but is immediately available upon hire/start of the new fiscal year. Unlike other types of leave it doesn’t roll over and you don’t get paid out for it when you leave. It used to be our funeral leave but we converted it to personal leave as a stop gap solution to the Holidays issue.

      1. Kimmy Schmidt*

        This is how it works at my university too. We tend to use personal days for those weird little emergencies that pop up that you don’t really want to take sick time for – vet appointments, unexpected travel, signing legal documents, plumbers, things like that.

    4. Sparkly Librarian*

      At my unionized government job, there’s a category called “Personal Business Leave” that is written into our contract. PBL is paid out of our accrued vacation bank. I can take this time off, paid, without prior notice (although if I can schedule it ahead, I do), and there’s no retaliation. I’ve used it for situations where I absolutely must be not at work — pet’s euthanasia, court hearing, surprise foster placement before working out childcare and family leave — and while it’s unusual and not everyone needs to take it, it’s valid.

  75. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

    In the “other” category, it would be interesting to read what people consider as “other” than vacation, sick or holiday.

    For me in higher-ed it means the 2 weeks each year the university is closed, we get paid, but officially we only have Christmas Day and News Years Day as paid Holidays but we don’t need to use any PTO.

    I guess I also have “other” time as any professional development — I’m not at work but it’s paid time, I’m at some sort of off-site third-party conference or class of my own choosing — not to be confused with a Team-building Day or Department Retreat.

    1. I should really pick a name*

      My office has a regular (paid) shutdown. I listed that as other because it’s paid time off, but I don’t choose it (and it’s not a holiday)

    2. Tau*

      I decided to put my educational leave there – I have five days from a company benefit and five from a state one (not in the US). The company one can be used for things like conferences or vaguely-job-related training, while the state one can be used for all sorts of things. I’ve been using it for language courses, preferably in the south of Spain during winter :)

      1. münchner kindl*

        Oh! I forgot about that because I haven’t used that, but theoretically, I have a legal right to up to 5 days of training/ education from my employer, either courses they offer, or courses by other providers if they qualify as training.

        I guess “other” would be also that my employer (public instution) gives me one paid day off for each time I volunteered on Sunday for election helping?

        Other would also be that I have legal right to paid days off for special circumstances, like when a close relative dies, but which (thankfully) I haven’t needed so far, so I haven’t looked up the details.

  76. JTP*

    I think some people entered PTO hours instead of days in question 5. Someone entered 1000 but there’s only 365/366 days in a year!

  77. Bartimaeus*

    One thing I didn’t get the chance to mention in the form is that there is unlimited

    1. Bartimaeus*

      Derp. Unlimited *unpaid* time off. Just paid time off is limited. But they won’t force you to come into work if you need to take an unpaid sick day or some such.

      1. KTM*

        Agreed this would be an interesting addition to future surveys. My employer has a policy that you can use up to X number of unpaid leave hours (but you have to use your PTO first). I had an employee use this to take some extended leave after their brother passed away and bereavement only covers a few days.

  78. Nonn*

    This was kind of depressing… I have no PTO (sick or vacation), no paid holidays, and no bonus. Except that my boss gave me Lifesavers because I’m A Lifesaver.

    1. Blame It On The Weatherman*

      But the good thing is you can browse your own or similar industries on here, and look for somewhere to change to that does give PTO! I hope you find something better.

  79. Leslie*

    Two comments. I listed that we have 30 days of sick leave annually, which is somewhat true, but it is emergency sick leave, and it can only be used when all your PTO is gone. So if you have a major medical event requiring several weeks out or FMLA requiring time off each week, you will have no PTO during what is probably a stressful period.
    Second, a we can roll over some PTO, but only two weeks worth

  80. IWorkAllDay*

    I would love to have this type of survey but for people’s maternity and paternity policies. Some companies in the US have terrible leave.

    1. Blame It On The Weatherman*

      I’d venture to say that most companies in the US have none. I don’t think FMLA should count (though companies love to pretend it does, e.g. “We give you three months unpaid leave through FMLA”, like no, that’s the legal minimum.)

      Our state now mandates like two months of partially paid maternity leave I think, but I eyeroll any company that pretends they’re so generous for “offering” that. It’s the law, you don’t get credit for that.

    2. BellyButton*

      I lived in the UK, Australia, Canada, and now the US– I am appalled that women have to go back to work at 6 weeks (if they’re lucky). I met a woman who was checking my groceries at the grocery store who gave birth THREE days ago! That is horrifying and so wrong.

      1. Blame It On The Weatherman*

        Yeah small businesses, retail, and a lot of places give nothing. FMLA doesn’t cover, like, a small sandwich shop or something (which also might not offer any PTO anyway). It leads to a lot of maternal complications and/or people just losing their jobs or having to drop out of the workforce.

    3. PracticallyPerfectInNoWay*

      Public school teacher here. My district offers three weeks paid and you can do an additional five weeks unpaid. Let me tell you how much fun it is to leave a three-week old and return to teaching when you’re still recovering from giving birth.

    4. One HR Opinion*

      This would have to be relatively nuanced because at most companies, this type of leave is not a separate leave bank but is rolled into other policies. For example, you can use your long term sick bank or short term disability to get paid if you are recovering from childbirth; but if you are bonding with a baby, you can only use PTO or unpaid time. Stuff like that.

      1. len*

        I think this (“most companies”) only applies to the US and really I would consider both of those situations to be 0 parental leave, if all they’ll do is *let* you use leave every employee gets.

      2. Allia*

        Neither of those are parental leave. They are workarounds – and poor ones, at that – because there is no parental leave.

        And the fact that it doesn’t exist at most (US) companies is kinda the whole point.

  81. Ashes*

    In a European country, 25 days off plus 10 extra days if you work more than 35 hours a week. Plus unlimited sick leave. I’ve been on sick leave for almost three years and I’m still protected and recieve pay via the company’s insurance (they need insurance which then covers pay for sick employees amongst other things). Most interestingly we HAVE to take two weeks off consecutively in July or August to get a proper rest. You can’t roll days over and you get extra days off for marriage, births and deaths.

    1. Mim*

      Ugh, I’ve been there.

      Are you the type of part time retail who is expected to be working just few enough hours a week that you don’t qualify for benefits like PTO? That’s the best kind, right? /sarcasm

    2. Broken Lawn Chair*

      There are retail employers that aren’t like that, though maybe they’re rare. At mine, you have to work a year before you get PTO, but it’s based on your hours. So we have people who work a couple of days a week and get 4 vacation days. I got 10 at first and now 15.

      I also started getting scheduled close to 40 hours a week as soon as they realized I was competent and reliable, and I became benefits eligible 3 months later based on average hours per week. Even though I was not officially full time.

  83. KTM*

    Oh no… In viewing the results I just realized I responded in HOURS not DAYS. I’m so sorry Alison! I don’t think I can edit :/

  84. H.C.*

    I have unused PTO that gets paid out at the end of each year, so it doesn’t quite fit the rolled over or lose it options.

    Just throwing it out there as potential option for future PTO surveys.

  85. C.L.*

    Something I didn’t see mentioned that’s becoming more common (at least for non-profits) is sabbatical leave. My org just instituted 4 weeks of sabbatical leave every five years, and I know a few others in my Midwestern city that have implemented this policy in the last two years or so.

    1. Sparkly Librarian*

      That seems very generous! I’m taking a month off this summer, which I am cheekily referring to as “sabbatical”, and I have been with my employer 9 years. It’s being funded out of accrued vacation that I haven’t taken because I was saving up for parental leave (since I last took parental leave in 2019 with the accrued vacation from the first 4 years and my state’s paid family leave).

  86. a raging ball of distinction*

    I wasn’t quite sure how to answer the accrual question. None of my PTO days roll over, BUT category B pays us out unused time up to $$$$ at the end of the year. Categories A and C just disappear.

  87. teaching is different*

    I work in higher ed.
    My contract doesn’t have number. We have to be in the office 2-3 days a week during the academic year. However, other days and when the students are away, we have substantial opportunities for flex time and vacations. We’d only get disciplined if we tried to break the 2-3 days in person policy regularly (which they would notice because you would be missing the student services slots you’re supposed to cover and it would get reported).

  88. Adele*

    I have 4 weeks PTO with up to 5 days of rollover, but it’s functionally unlimited because I could take more time if I want to, I’d just make less. I get paid based on my billables (law firm), so taking a day off = losing 8 hours of expected pay. PTO is essentially meaningless. Maybe it’s helpful just to monitor whether I’m taking enough days off to avoid burnout or not.

  89. UKJobsworth*

    I don’t know how this works for public sector jobs in other countries, but I work for the National Health Service in the UK, and both our salaries and our benefits (leave/sick pay) are publicly available (and renegotiated annually).

  90. Sad Desk Salad*

    My company offers an obscene amount of PTO for the US–either 3 or 4 weeks (I have so much saved up I can’t remember how much is issued per year), and it rolls over up to 5/6 years. They also give us incentives to take time off during the summer and if there’s a day like July 4 that falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, they’ll give us that Monday/Friday as well. On its face it’s super generous (and if I ever leave, I will have a month’s salary paid due to how much I’ve accrued), but I can’t seem to take it all, or even half of it. Our workload is such that vacations are frowned upon, and even though we’ve increased our staff, our situation right now is such that coverage is not easily available. I’m getting better at taking more time (I’ve got two international trips this year and still not making a dent), but they really don’t foster a culture of legitimately disconnecting and taking real meaningful time off. They’re really good at scheduling lengthy meetings to talk about how important it is, though.

    I really need to advocate for myself better at using sick leave, though. I’ve worked through COVID twice, strep once, and colds twice. It’s just too hard to resist sticking it out and attending the meetings when you work remotely and there’s no risk of getting others sick. In a lot of ways, I’m my own worst enemy.

  91. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

    My PTO did roll over, but there is a cap and I was less than 4 hours under it. My current employer does confiscate PTO if one doesn’t take a minimum amount of it; they started that about 4 years ago.

    I did point out the unintended consequences that decision would bring, and so far have been vindicated in my prognostication.

    1. I am Emily's failing memory*

      Is “confiscate PTO” how you’re describing the cap, or something in addition to the cap?

      1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

        If you don’t use (enough of) your PTO, it’s confiscated (i.e. lost, forfeited, etc).

        Words mean things and there’s power in language when you use it accurately.

  92. merida*

    Thank you, Alison, for doing this!! I love being able to sort through the data and see what an average amount of time off looks like for certain industries. Wish I had data like this a few years ago when my friend told me how happy she was to finally get 5 full days off a year (she had worked FT as a manager in the hospitality industry for 3 or so years to be able to earn that much time off a year) and no paid holidays. Her boss told her 5 days was a lot of PTO – essentially gaslighting her into being excited. It was her first job out of college and she didn’t know any better so she believed him! This is why we need third-party transparent data like this.

  93. Seamyst*

    I said that unused PTO rolls over, but it isn’t unlimited; 72 sick days and 20 vacation days roll over, anything unused above those is lost.

  94. TX_Trucker*

    I’m curious for folks who have “other” PTO that is not vacation, personal, or sick – what is it called and what’s the purpose?

    1. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      I had my own answer upthread but I’ll add it here… There are two things that I would list as other.
      1. My university closes for 2 weeks… I get paid and don’t have to use any PTO, but it’s not officially listed as Holiday, and they can ask me to work during that time, so I listed it as other.
      2. I also get a certain number of days for professional development. It’s my choice on what to do with that time, I’m not expected to be working like responding to emails or doing any of my regular job duties, but I am paid for those days, and it is marked as Professional Development. For example, my regular job is graphic designer. I attend Adobe Max each year. It’s marginally educational during some of the break out sessions, but mostly it’s just one long infomercial with a heavy dose of cult-like motivational speakers and swag. Those 3 days are professional development not vacation.

    2. Greta*

      We have the ability to accrue wellness leave. You can get it by doing a physical, meeting challenge goals like 30 minutes of movement for x days for y weeks, or completing a healthy eating program. Completely voluntary and basically no one really knows who has done what, excepting the middle one as lunch walking groups sometimes pop up.

  95. Long time listener, first time commentor*

    I didn’t include it because I haven’t accrued enough to access it yet, but noting Australians (and I think New Zealanders?) are also entitled to long service leave. In my state ‘long service leave accrues at a rate of one week for every 60 weeks of continuous service’; pro rata for part time and casual employees. You can take what you’ve accrued so far after seven years, and the full entitlement accrues at ten years. If you leave a job after seven years what you’ve accrued gets paid out (but not if you leave before seven years).
    Once you’ve hit the seven year mark, you can just access it like your annual (vacation) leave, but the usual expectation is that you will take it in big chunks

    1. Long time listener, first time commentor*

      Argh, dropped the bottom of my comment!

      It’s expected you’ll take it in big chunks, like all of the six to nine weeks accrued.

      My understanding is it started as a perk to enable people to go ‘back’ to Europe to visit in a time when the travel time could be measured in days.

  96. jvp gal*

    At my office we get what they call excused with pay for our religious holidays if they’re not Christmas or Easter. So for me as a Jew, if Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah day fall on a workday, it’s a paid day for me. It’s very nice, because before this, working for non profits in the US I would have to use my vacation days to observe the High Holy Days.

  97. AW*

    we get 10 state holidays off but also 5 “University closure” days that do not count against pto. Black Friday is a university closure day, and any workday that falls between Christmas and new years day. I put those 5 as “other”

    we can roll over up to 320hrs at the end of the year (1.5x what we earn in a year). We have until the end of the first pay period in the new year to use up any overage, then they sweep you back to 320 before adding back in what you earned that first pay period. There’s a lot of things to complain about here, but how they handle pto isn’t one of them.

    1. AW*

      also, swept PTO goes into the compassionate leave bank. if an employee needs more leave due to a family emergency or illness but they’ve used all of theirs, they can apply for more from the compassionate leave pool.

  98. Cat Secrets*

    Lead preschool teacher here. I have a master’s in child development and have been doing this for 10 years. Zero paid days off, zero paid holidays. We have summers off but they’re unpaid. I made just shy of $15k last year. I’m not sure why I keep doing this job. I love the kids, I guess.

  99. 653-CXK*

    I just celebrated my 5th anniversary at CurrentJob, so I get 25 days of vacation, up from 20 for the past four years, accumulating 7.69 hours of PTO biweekly. In my 10th year, I would get 30 days of vacation, or 9.23 hours biweekly. It tops out at the 15th year with 35 days, or 10.77 hours biweekly. Our holidays (11) are fully paid.

    At ExJob, I began with 10.25 hours of ET earned biweekly, which then went up to 11.75 hours by the 10th year and 12.36 hours the 15th year. However, all holidays were deducted from the ET bank and all holidays except Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Christmas and New Years were floating holidays.

  100. American in Canada*

    I get paid benefits and time off “in lieu” (Canada) where I am paid a certain percent more than my wage instead of “earning” time off. Then my time off (sick, vacation, personal) is unpaid. It is roughly equivalent to 20 days a year (holidays are separate), so I answered the survey that way. If I take off more time in a year, I just make less money. If I take less time off, I am paid more in a year.

  101. Just Twigged*

    I was confused by the “Is your workplace unionised?” question. In Australia unions exist for (I think?) every industry and any worker can join their relevant union, regardless of where they work or whether any of their coworkers join too. I’ve only just twigged that unions must be workplace-specific in the US…? I guess that explains the whole union-busting plotline on Superstore.

    1. Broken Lawn Chair*

      Not only that – in my large retail store, some departments are unionized, but some are not!

    2. Dina*

      I put “yes” because my workplace has a union rep and union meetings. My last workplace didn’t, although I and many of my colleagues were union members.

    3. Tx_Trucker*

      In the USA, only about 10% of all employees are covered by a union. The rate is much higher for government employees, I believe about a third have union coverage.

    4. münchner kindl*

      From what I’ve read over the years, it varies by state in the US, but at least in the past, some workplaces were unionized in US which meant that everybody had to join a union before being hired. That’s why the “right-to-work law” which actually means “employee can be fired at any moment without any protection” is called that, it was sold to the public to bust the monopoly of unions (replacing with the monopoly of employers).

      I don’t think it can be compared to normal union practices in non-US countries, where each employee can decide to join a union, but (at least in Europe) unions and employers associations do general agreements that apply to all, giving employees the benefit even without membership.

  102. KB*

    You didn’t ask if I were salaried or hourly. That might have been good to know. Of course, you didn’t want to overburden your survey-takers!

  103. Broken Lawn Chair*

    2 things.
    1) I put that I have 7 days of sick leave. I do have 56 hours a year, but I can’t just call in and say “got the flu, taking the day off” and get paid. I can only use this time if I’m off for at least 3 days, and then I have to go through the insurance company that processes our short term disability and FMLA and other long term leave. It’s so stupid.
    2) In theory I have paid holidays, I think about 5. The way it works is that (if certain conditions are met) I get paid for the holiday whether I work that day or not. So in theory I could have, say, Memorial Day off, work 4 other days, and get paid for 5. What almost always happens, since it’s retail and we’re perpetually understaffed, is that I work 5 days (which may or may not include the holiday) and get paid for 6. We can’t ask for holidays off, normally – it’s luck whether you get the day or not.

    Store managers never get to take holidays off. They are exempt salaried, so they also don’t get paid extra, but I think they get a paid day off in a different week.

  104. It's Me*

    I’m not sure how to add “We technically get the week between Christmas and New Year’s off but it’s not guaranteed even though everyone would riot if we didn’t get it and sometimes they make us wait until October until they tell us it’s happening.”

  105. Dina*

    Didn’t have space for “we have the time between Christmas and New Years off as paid leave outside annual leave but that amount depends on where the public holidays fall”

  106. Scarletb*

    My sick leave rolls over in a separate balance to annual leave – I have nearly 80 days in the bank (just lucky with illness so far). Annual leave (vacation leave) rolls over as well – we’re not really supposed to have more than about 200 hours in the bank, but it’s poorly enforced. I currently have about 8.5 weeks built up because it’s been a busy 12 months or so, and that’s after getting a week of it cashed out in January.

  107. Peanut Hamper*

    Is there a way to download this spreadsheet once the survey is closed? I’d like to run it through some statistical analyses.

  108. Bethany*

    I wish there was a question asking if you get any more than the legal requirement in your country/state.

    I get 20 days annual leave, 10 days sick leave and roughly 9 public holidays. But so does everyone else in my area, it’s the legal minimum.

    1. münchner kindl*

      That would be good at least for the 50 different US states.

      Maybe the legal minimum for the non-US/ European countries would depress or anger the Americans again?

      1. Old Admin*

        I work in Germany, too.
        In spite of up to 30 vacation days, 10-13 paid holidays, and up to six weeks of paid sick days (after which public health insurance *gasp* pays unemployment levels of support for easily a year if confirmed by doctors), we are very productive at my company. No crazy overtime, either. Labor laws protect against baseless firing.
        There is a reason why I don’t want to work in the US anymore

  109. Andi*

    11 paid holidays, 8 paid sick days… and actually unlimited PTO above that. My coworker took two months off to backpack across Thailand. Paid. She had been with the company for less than a year. And it was totally fine!
    In practice, this somewhat depends on your supervisor. Some bosses, like my backpacker coworker’s, think that’s great and encourage you to take time off. Others, like my boss, will sulk and text you 5 times a day if you are out sick once a year, and they make it hardly worth it to take time.
    But on a corporate level, the option is definitely there.

  110. Miss Bus Driver*

    I didn’t know what to put for paid holidays because we do get paid holidays but we have to work on holidays also if it’s your normal day of the week to work (I drive for public transportation)

  111. Tx_Trucker*

    I answered the survey as it pertains to me. But my company has different leave policies for different positions. We are a 7 day per week operation and only close 4 days out of the year. Our mostly blue collar workforce, that is required to work many bank holidays has a much more generous PTO policy than our office staff. This is a bit unusual for my industry but is a massive recruiting benefit for us.

  112. MAC*

    I did my best, but it was complicated by the fact that *everything* comes out of one bank, and we just accrue 200 hours annually. (Slightly less than 8 hours per bi-weekly pay period.) The breakdown is supposed to be 10 days vacation, 5 sick, 9 “facility closure days” (i.e. holidays), 1 personal day. But to further complicate matters, we work 4×10, BUT our allotment for those facility closure days is only 8 hours. So 9 of those x 10 hours = 90 hours, which eats up the theoretical personal day + some vacation time unless you work the extra 2 hours each week there’s a holiday.

    I can’t complain too much, because I did the math last year and I would have been in the hole for vacation time, but with a lot of unused sick time banked. But it’s a double-edged sword, because it *encourages* people to work when they’re sick (and we are fully back in the office) so they can “save” those hours for fun stuff.

    I tend to hoard vacation time anyway, but especially after a layoff a few years ago where the payout was significant in keeping me above water while I was out of work. And with every Friday off, I don’t need to burn it to grab a 3-day weekend away.

  113. SBQQ_Custom_Object__c*

    To the Salesforce admin with more than 5 days off (incl. holidays, PTO, vacation) in a year: is your company hiring?

  115. Rumpole's Old Bailey*

    Well that forced me to go and have a look at my work’s Enterprise Bargaining Agreement. It felt rather odd, once I added up all the paid leave I was entitled to that there were more days than days of the year. There’s some pretty good policies including cultural and ceremonial leave, surrogacy and foster carer, gender transition, substance abuse therapy, Family Violence Leave, and a whole lot more. Well done to my work and union negotiating all that.

  116. GythaOgden*

    This turned into more of an essay than I intended, but it’s been interesting to read the site over the last ~28 months or so and see the differences between the UK and US systems. There are definitely drawbacks to the generosity we get in terms of how we’re expected to behave with the gift of good sick leave/annual leave regulation and the reporting culture surrounding it.

    Sick leave is theoretically six months full pay, six months half pay, but long before that you’ll be talking to management as to whether you can actually return to work, as we work in a coverage based role and they need the work done. However, because of the coverage-based nature of the job (and that in many positions you couldn’t just parachute a temp in to cover; you need the institutional knowledge and systems access, and for maintenance the site knowledge), we run an instance-based system. It’s calculated not on amount of days taken in total but on absences, so my two-week bout of flu last year was one absence. You’re allowed 3 instances in 6 months or 5 in 12 months; it does disincentivise ‘sickies’ (real or fake) but it does mean that you’re given time to get better if you’re really ill.

    As a temp, I was on the other side of this — I was brought in to cover someone on long term sick leave, and kept getting my contract renewed every month as the person off sent in her medical notes, but eventually she resigned — I’m guessing because she ran out of fully paid leave (you accrue a month of that per year of service) and couldn’t see that she was going to be able to return. I was her replacement but it took another few months to get me made permanent. To be honest, I’d come from a previous temp role where I was only working odd days when the clinic needed me and they couldn’t give me anything for two weeks, meaning I had to find something longer term. It’s not good to train someone up with the promise of more work if someone is dipping in and out of sick leave, because you’re investing a lot of time bringing a temp up to speed with company practices and then not able to give them any work, and you can’t get them back when they move on after being let go. So having people on longer term sick leave and incentivising that is actually better in terms of getting stable, knowledgeable coverage than someone taking random days or weeks off and the business getting shafted as a result because as soon as they train a temp the actual employee comes back and when they’re next out the trained person is working somewhere more stable.

    After the system came in when we transferred to a new organisation with tighter controls on leave, I generally felt better taking two or three days for a cold so as to not try and struggle in after one missed day. I haven’t needed mental health time off since the transfer, but again, because it is openly stated that your absence will have an impact on your team and your delivery and there is a very supportive atmosphere in the workplace (including training on how to look after our mental health, access to a third party MH app with some good affirmation videos, neurodivergence awareness material that actually treats us like adults, and practical workspace and time management advice so as not to get overwhelmed, and a really great EAP), I’ve not felt disadvantaged by this so much.

    As for being autistic…I was able to speak up in a town hall meeting yesterday about how I found the paperless direction the company is trying to move towards was a real help for neurodivergent folk who struggled with keeping paperwork in order and with the sensory overload of too many bits of paper. They read out my comment, leaving off my name for privacy reasons, and were really happy that I’d been able to add to that particular part of the presentation. I felt ok with it because all the messaging coming out of the org about wellbeing is handled sincerely and actively by my team and by others.

    I like working in that kind of environment because for me, my struggles with neurodivergence have been hindered by not being able to mask — I would have counted as ‘high-functioning’ under the old terminology but under the new wording ‘high support needs’ fits me better, so I’ve had to be relatively open about what I need and why, as a person with an undergraduate degree from a prestigious London institution and a Masters in international law, I’ve been sat on reception for ten years. I’ve seen support be revolutionised in the past decade or so, from being very paternalistic and focused on the Sheldon Cooper archetype to being empowering, understanding of how autism presents in women, and giving me various hands up to where I want to be. While I’m never going to take on high-flying strategic roles, I want to make the most of my ability to focus on details and pick up on the bits and pieces that people focused on strategy often miss, and that’s as important in the workplace as being the boss.

    So for me a good sick leave policy takes into account employee wellbeing in the workplace as well as days off. The instance system does trigger conversations when the person reaches the limit, but by law those have to be conducted on a case by case basis — we can’t just summarily dismiss someone on the basis of too many absences. I’m not one to be late to work without a good reason, so I can’t speak to that situation, but I’d imagine it would similar. And these policies apply throughout the org, I suspect because our systems, hospital maintenance in particular, can’t function if there’s no coverage even from the top level management, so the company handbook explicitly sets out expectations from employees and expressly forbids compressed hours; Friday is just another working day and things can come up all over the place.

    (You also need a doctor’s note after 7 working days, which isn’t a hardship to get now it’s electronic but that system only came in in 2022; before that it was ok to speak to a doctor on the phone, but someone had to actually collect a physical note for you and either drop it off at the office or post it by snail mail to the line manager. Nevertheless, I got one several times on day 1 for mental health issues where I needed a break, particularly while my husband was ill and dying, to ensure things were taken relatively seriously and I could go off and completely unwind rather than have to worry about how I was feeling from day to day. It helps more than it hurts tbh, since we collect data on why we were off ill as a matter of occupational health law, and we’re more open about things like this in general.)

    I think there’s a difference in culture here tbh. I feel like it’s a reciprocal thing — the employer is legally forced to make as good a workplace as they can and offer a particular amount of sick leave (at the very minimum paid for by at a government-set rate, derisory as it no doubt is) and annual leave, and the employee agrees not to take advantage and to report in when asked. I haven’t experienced the US system but the phrase ‘do I have to take this as PTO?’ isn’t something I’d ever need to ask — the answer here is yes, you do (and it’s accounted for in the statutory minimum leave), whereas ISTM that the US has less legal protection but more flexibility and argument over what counts as PTO and what doesn’t.

    And, oh yeah, salaries here are generally lower than they are in the US. It does take into account lower healthcare costs (although we still pay into National Insurance based on income with every payslip, and that can be a substantial amount of money for higher paid people) but the reverse sticker shock I’ve seen from US people coming over here is enlightening as to expectations. Also open/shared offices are a default in most places; it has to be said though that that means most people are used to working in one and at least in dedicated office space acoustics are taken into account. I prefer it tbh because I get very lonely when I’m tucked away in a corner — ironically, because I’m a hermit at home, I need the stimulation that comes from being at work. In my role we have a lot of collaborative work, so it’s not as bad as all that now I do WFH, but just being in my own enclosed space all day while in an office would be frustrating and a bit lonely.

    So there are definitely trade-offs for all that good stuff. No system is set up so that employees get everything; it means that the division of rights and responsibilities shifts further IME towards our end as employees and that the culture is more focused on regulating the way we take leave rather than not trusting us with it. It’s more collectivist than people imagine, and I’m ok with a lot of the restraints on it because it does make for a more constructive environment than the antagonisms persisting in the US.

  117. Michigander*

    I’m curious about the people who put in numbers over 100 for vacation days. Did you put in hours instead of days? Are you able to roll over from year to year and build a balance and this is your total balance instead of your annual balance? Do you work for a company that gives you multiple months of paid vacation a year? There is at least one entry so far with more days than there are in the year, so I suspect something is off.

  118. Oska*

    Over here there’s a separate allotment of “sick child days”, i.e. when your kid is sick and you need to stay home with them. I don’t have children, so I didn’t need to consider it, but would that count as sick leave here? (Handy to know for others who are searching the comment thread for answers.)

  119. Nebula*

    GythaOgden above has covered some of what I was thinking of here re: sick leave and how it differs in the UK, and of course we do have statutory sick pay (SSP), pathetic as it is, which means that technically I suppose I could have answered that I have unlimited sick pay. I stuck to saying how many days I would be paid by my employer above that which, given I’ve only been in my current job for a month, isn’t that much. The policy is one-sixth of length of service at full pay, and then again one-sixth of length of service at half pay, up to a maximum of six months at each, beyond which it’s SSP. So for me as of today, that’s five days at full pay, five days at half pay.

    My current workplace also mandates using four days over Christmas, which is fine by me as I would take that time off anyway (especially as my birthday is in that period too – I always take time off from just before Christmas to the first week of January), but in general it’s not a great policy. It is at least outweighed by the fact the leave policy is pretty generous, so even with those four compulsory days you still have a fair amount, and we also have one extra public holiday compared to many employers (a local holiday).

    1. GythaOgden*

      It’s nice to hear from fellow UK people :). And yeah, I actually think the US is a bit more generous in terms of short/long term disability policies despite the lack of cast-iron legal protection. There are ‘personal independence payments’ for people on very long term sick leave like my husband, which came to around £500/month, but that’s still about a third of my take-home pay in a very low-level clerical job, and 5/7 of his biweekly payslip at the job he was working at when he fell ill. I told the Department of Work and Pensions (i.e. the benefits administrators) to get stuffed (in the nicest way possible) when they tried to claw it back after he died; my dad as the executor of hubby’s will presumably handled it but they had a cheek trying to claw it back.

      To be honest in the NHS we don’t close over those three days between Christmas and New Year. Office based/admin get the normal bank holidays, clinical and maintenance staff are on a rota system (and thus get the days normally allotted to bank holidays as extra days off at other times) and everyone theoretically works those three intervening days because everything still needs to keep open and running and clinics still happen on a reduced basis. So it makes more sense to me at least to look at it that way — those are still business hours and thus would be deducted from PTO anywhere that fully shut down.

      But then again, I work them anyway, particularly since being widowed. When hubby was alive I took one or two but because my colleagues had actual family and before the pandemic only one of us could be off at once, I just shrugged my shoulders and continued working. I got the days to take off at other times, hubby got the place to himself to decompress after having to spend the holiday with my family (my mother in particular who he called Hurricane [First name] after a similarly-named Atlantic storm blew through one year) and I managed to avoid having to spend even more time with my relatives than necessary. Also, it was the time when I could discreetly knit, draw, listen to YouTube etc rather than having to look busy. Even this past Christmas when working from home normally, I got asked to cover my old job because my colleagues were still adjusting to the fact that one of them had to be there over that period and I was no longer around to take one for the team.

      My current line manager has put the kibosh on me being used as a substitute receptionist but I’ll continue my tradition as I said to wriggle out of forced interaction with the horde.

  120. MPM*

    Would love to see an additional question along the lines of “does your workload/ company culture allow you to take all of your earned vacation and holidays each year?” I’m definitely not rolling mine over every year because it’s my preference to do so.

  121. Scott M*

    FYI my company allows you to rollover some of your unused PTO but not all (48 hours worth). That wasn’t a option in the survey so I just selected that I could roll it over.

  122. Alisaurus*

    I filled the form out as-is for me currently, but I want to add that we get more PTO the longer we work for my company. So next year, I’ll have an even higher number of days I can take.

    Also, my company is super flexible on WFH for “slightly under the weather” days and for traveling, so days that might be PTO at other companies can be WFH at mine. It has helped tremendously compared to LastJob.

  123. Lizy*

    I’d love another field for “additional info about leave” or something– like, we have 2 days of volunteer leave a year (use it or lose it). Sick leave is use it or lose it, as are the personal/floating holidays, but vacation will roll over. Also, I think we get an additional week (or something) after we’ve been at the company 3 years. And it would be nice to note paternity leave policies (like my company offers 6 weeks paid to a new parent).

    Just my 2 cents.

  124. Lorraine*

    I need to know – WHO is getting 24 paid holidays in the US? What holidays? Even thinking through state specific ones, like Patriot’s Day or Cesar Chavez Day, what are the others?? Are you getting multicultural days like Diwali or Eid al-Fitr? I’M SO CURIOUS!!!

    (Just because there are only officially like 10 bank holidays in the US, right?)

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Maybe they’re counting the week after Christmas as a paid holiday. A job I applied for said they also get the week of the 4th of July off so maybe that’s the other paid holiday. Honestly, EVERYONE in the US should get those weeks off, but of course the problem is that the people who work service jobs couldn’t take them off and therein lies a whole lot of wealth disparity. When I rule the world I plan to give a 1000% raise to everyone who works a service job. And double that for sanitation workers.

    2. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain*

      There are 12 Federal Holidays.

      For the folks getting 24 paid holiday’s I bet it’s either government or education employees. I’m in higher ed and we get a total of 12 paid holidays (we don’t get Washington’s Birthday).
      1. New Year’s Day*
      2. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day
      3. President’s Day
      4. Memorial Day
      5. Juneteenth
      6. Independence Day
      7. Labor Day
      8. Indigenous People’s Day (some still list it as Columbus Day)
      9. Veteran’s Day
      10 and 11 Thanksgiving and the Friday after
      12. Christmas Day*

      *While our employee handbook states we only get Christmas Day and News Years Day as paid holiday, the university is closed for 2 weeks — I listed that as Other since I don’t use PTO or holiday — but some people may have that counted as holiday pay instead. If I listed university closure, that would put me at 20 days.

      States often have a few more. Some states might close schools and gov offices for Mardi Gras, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Christmas Eve… Washington DC gets Inauguration Day, California has Cesar Chavez Day, Utah has Pioneer Day…

  125. Save Bandit*

    I was hoping for a section at the end where I could put additional notes! I work in an elementary school setting and we get 12 days PTO for the school year. June and August are dramatically reduced schedules, and July we are off entirely. So technically that’s PTO but I certainly can’t include it in my bank of time when I need to take days during the year.

  126. Slow Gin Lizz*

    I just got offered a new job and would love to fill this out for that job (already did my current job) but since I don’t know how many vacation days or sick days I will take, I’m not sure I should.

  127. just me*

    I cheated a bit because I felt like the real answer is deceptive. Our work schedule is 4 10’s, so if I say the actual number of days, it sounds like less time than it is. I currently get 3 weeks of PTO, so 12 days (120 hours), but I put 15.
    Sick pay is separate and state mandated, I can’t remember how much it is. I guessed a week, might be more.
    We can partially roll over sick days, PTO must be used by anniversary date, which can be a pain. We all tend to end up taking random time off to get rid of it. Company culture is that PTO gets used, it’s “use it or lose it”, but nobody loses it.

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