Which Country’s Government Mandates That Employees Take Vacation?

According to the World Policy Analysis Center at the University of California Los Angeles, the United States is the only advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee paid vacation to employees, which makes us one of only 13 countries in the world that doesn't mandate that benefit to our workers. 

As a matter of fact, the average American is given 14 days of vacation, but only takes 10.  Collectively, Americans failed to take an estimated 577,212,000 available days of vacation in 2013.

I don't think we'll live to see the day that our government requires us to take a break and actually use the vacation days given to us, but the Japanese government wants its people to take a break.

In Japan, employees are given more than 18 paid days off a year but most take barely half of that. And last year 16% took no vacation at all. Japanese workers also spent an average of 173 hours working overtime and about 22.3% of Japanese employees work 50 hours or more each week.

The problem of over-working in Japan is so bad that 2,500 suicides last year are being blamed on the stress of working so much. So the government is stepping in with new laws forcing workers to take at least five days off a year.

There's no way that I would ever wish for our government to step in and mandate paid vacation because people were taking their own lives due to stress of working so much, but wouldn't it be nice if ALL United States employees were at least offered paid vacation days each year?