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So since this episode was recorded on the summer Friday after July 4th when it seemed like no one but the Jobs Day crew was working....let's discuss data around vacation in the US. With graphs!
77% of private-sector workers in the US had access to paid vacation in 2018. Compare that to...77% in 2010. At the same time paid family leave access has jumped from 10% to 16% and paid sick days from 63% to 71%. 
This graph takes the same time trend and normalizes 2010 to 100, which makes the trend easier to see
So why hasn't paid vacation time budged? We've seen a tight labor market the last few years - shouldn't people be getting more vacation time?
You might think it's because the access hasn't changed, but the average number of days people get has changed. Nope.
But remember how paid family leave and paid sick leave access were increasing?
Higher-paid workers already get paid sick leave (also vacation time) - they don't need to negotiate for those (for top 10% of workers, 92% have access to both paid sick leave and vacations). But they do need access to paid family leave! And they've been getting more of it.
Lower-paid workers on the other hand don't have access to vacations or paid family leave...but getting access to paid sick leave comes first for them. Even after the big jump for the lowest paid 10% of workers, only 31% have access to paid sick leave (that's after a 12p.p. jump)
So why aren't more Americans getting access to paid vacations? Highly paid workers already have access - they want access to paid family leave. Whereas lower paid workers don't even have access to paid sick days - so paid vacations are likely not their priority.
In conclusion, if you're one of the 77% with access to paid vacations - take them!
(Also if you're interested in the 0.1% of job postings that offer unlimited PTO...you should read @andrewflowers piece on this: hiringlab.org/2019/06/18/unl…)
