Why Employee Vacations Are Good For The Economy

Taking a break from work then going on that long-planned vacation has been found to be beneficial to the economy, in a recent study. However, the downside is, despite U.S. workers being allotted close to 22 vacation days as of last year, more than 50 percent weren't really up for it.

Project: Time Off researchers (in partnership with GfK) noted key points on the state of American employees who are spending less and less off their vacation credits, Fast Company reported. The team asked up to 5,600 working men and women in regard to their vacation habits.

Results showed that up to 658 million of vacation days were deemed lost, meaning a whole week off vacation credits were not taken advantaged of by these workers. On the other hand, for those workers whose unused vacations don't get added to the next year's number of vacation days, up to 222 million days were considerably lost.

Meanwhile, according to an analysis made on vacation use and unemployment courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it was found out that during the years 1982 and 2010, U.S. workers actually took time off. The breakdown of BLS' data stated that in 1982, 20.9 vacation days were used on average, while in 2010, when unemployment rates were as high as 9.6% - only 17.6 vacation days in a work year were taken advantaged of.

What's more interesting is that data reported from last year further showed workers using up to just 16.2 days off from their jobs, even though the unemployment rate went down 5.3 percent. Furthermore, the study also estimated up to 1.6 million jobs could have been filled in last 2015, US News reported.

Another important note: workers who left out up to two weeks' worth of paid vacation have a 6.5% chance of receiving bonuses than their colleagues who actually used up all vacation time. So, might as well start re-planning on that much needed vacation asap.