There’s little festive cheer for over a third of workers this Christmas that work through the holidays.

Forty per cent of workers will be working for some or all of the holidays (25 December – 1 January). Shockingly most of those are simply trying to shake off growing workloads. According to the research released by Post Office Travel Services, 25 per cent are back to the grind because they have too much work to do to take time off.

A further 58 per cent couldn’t take annual leave because of shift rotas or other colleagues getting in there first. And a handful admitted they liked their jobs so much they would rather be there than at home or on holiday.

People working for the government or public sectors are most likely to work over the Christmas period (75 per cent) as well as lose some of their holiday entitlement (59 per cent). Those working in the service industry are least likely to lose their holiday days (13 per cent) and those working in advertising, marketing or PR are least likely to be working over the holiday period (11 per cent).

All this amounts to a staggering 1.3 billion days holiday being lost in untaken leave with almost half (49 per cent) losing between four and seven days and seven per cent lose a whopping three weeks or more (15 days).

In the battle of the sexes men are worse than women at booking their full holiday quota with 39 per cent of men losing out compared to only 32 per cent of women.

Post Office head of travel services, Helen Warburton said: “We were surprised to discover that so many people will be at work during the festive period. Particularly when we have seen healthy sales of foreign currency over recent weeks which suggests more people are heading abroad. It’s also worrying to learn that so many people are not using up their holiday entitlement for the year.”

In similar news HR Zone recently reported that one in ten business men and women worked on Christmas day.