“When I have time I don’t have money. When I have money I don’t have time,” says Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin. He is not alone. While many employees find themselves faced with 60-, 70-, or 80-hour weeks (and sometimes more); others who are unemployed can find themselves with too much time on their hands.

Take Dennis Lee, a sales associate whose girlfriend is unemployed. She has time to spare, but he says her unemployment makes it “financially impossible for me to support the both of us, even if we just go on a small trip, and get a small hotel and stay for a couple of days.”

Yet some argue that individuals choose to be unemployed to take advantage of social safety nets and enjoy a more leisurely lifestyle. Casey Mulligan, a University of Chicago economist, says, “I estimate that half of the drop in the employment-population ratio came from an expansion of the social safety net.”

Those who are employed and who may have the financial means to take a vacation often leave those vacation days on the table. The average Canadian employee receives almost 4 weeks of vacation time a year, and 76 percent take their full vacation time. The average US employee gets 2.6 weeks of vacation a year, yet only 43 percent take that time.

The challenge of taking leisure time does not seem to be a problem for employees in many European countries.

Take the French, who get 30 days of vacation and say they take all of them. Employees in Spain, Italy, and Germany get about the same time off. Moreover, if you work in the European Union and get sick on vacation, the European Court of Justice states that you are entitled to take a make-up vacation.

Questions 

1. Why do you think North American employees are given less vacation time relative to employees in other countries?

2. Why do you think Canadian workers often do not take all of their allotted vacation time? Are these personal choices, or are they driven more by society, or by organizational culture?

3. If many unemployed are spending around two hours/day looking for work as some research indicates, do you think that means they are enjoying a “leisurely” lifestyle? Why or why not? If unemployed, how would you spend your days?