I found this vacation infograpic (click here to launch) that discusses a variety of statistics about travel and it got me thinking… I always find it interesting working for a UK company, in an office in the US, how vastly different the standard of vacation time is. It would appear that most of the UK receives around three weeks to a month of national vacation while most poeple here in the US receive as little as one week a year, with many companies not offering any at all until a certain minimum standard time employed has been met.

In a down economy, it is interesting to see the cuts made to benefits such as vacation and time off, as people seem to no longer care as much about such "side benefits" as long as they are receiving a steady paycheck. Hopefully this is just a pendulum and that we will eventually see a rebound back towards more generous benefits packages, as I hate thinking about my younger sister coming out of university and taking a job that doesn’t allow for any time off during the year because of how deep the pipeline of qualified job candidates runs.

 I remember in 2007 a friend of mine getting recruited by at least three companies when he was just about to graduate, with signing bonuses, generous vacation packages and other great benefits. He had his pick. That was just about the last time I had heard anything even remotely familiar to this being true. Now it seems that for one job position there will be dozens if not hundreds.

Funny how things change. I’ll be curious to see what the next few years hold.

Infograpic courtesy of Travelex Currency Exchange