Happy holiday. Now get back to work.

This year, Christmas falls on a Sunday.

Will American workers miss out on one of the few paid holidays most of them get?

I haven’t been able to find data on how many workers can take the next day off when a major holiday falls on a Sunday.

What we do know is that Christmas is one of only five paid holidays available to most working Americans.

And it’s not like Americans have many other opportunities to spend time with their families.

Compared to many other rich countries, we stand out as a nation no vacation.

Partly it is a matter of law.

We are the only high-income country where the law does not oblige companies to offer paid holidays and vacations;

most European countries require jobs to include at least one month of paid vacation.

Japan offers a little less, but on the other hand has an unusual number of compulsory paid holidays, so the Japanese still have quite a lot of compulsory holidays.

One can imagine that US companies, even if they are not required by law to offer paid holidays, will try to attract workers by offering them voluntary holidays.

but many They don’tor offer very little.

In general, Americans work many more hours per year than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.

It might surprise you to see that the Germans They are the ones who work fewer hours.

Who thinks that in Germany you work a lot?

The answer is: anyone who has traveled to Europe during the summer.

Visit, say, Florence, Italy these days, and you’ll see that in the long run the Ghibellines (who supported the medieval Holy Roman Empire centered on Germany, against the Guelphs, who supported the pope) emerged victorious.

But back to our workaholic nation:

The strange thing about our lack of free time is that it marks a break with historical trends that have continued in other countries.

Up until the 20th century, American workers reaped some of the benefits of growing prosperity in the form of more leisure time.

The normal working week has been reduced from about 60 hours in the late 1800s to 40 hours today, and the number of days off has increased, so that the average hours worked over the course of a year have decreased.

Over time, Americans stopped working less.

In other wealthy nations, however, the downward trend of continued work.

One implication of this rather strange divergence is that some care needs to be taken when making international comparisons of economic performance.

Very often I see statements that the US economy is more successful than Western European economies because we have a gross domestic product per capita higher.

That’s true, but much of this difference reflects the fact that we’re working longer hours, rather than being more productive when we do work.

That is, it is not so much an indicator of US economic superiority as the result of several elections.

Which begs the question:

Who chooses better?

Would Europeans be better off working as hard as Americans, or would Americans be better off taking European-style vacations?

A free-market fundamentalist might argue — and some do — that America’s vacation-free economy must be superior because it’s the result of voluntary decisions by workers and employers, while Europeans are forced to take vacations by government policy . .

But there are good reasons to question this fundamentalist position.

Economists Alberto Alesina, Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote argued a few years ago that the holidays have a “social multiplier”, meaning that holiday time is more enjoyable if many of your friends and family are also on paid holidays, so you can spend quality time together.

If so, governments could be doing everyone a favor by preventing them from overworking.

I’d add that in at least some jobs — ones that a lot of people I know do — there’s a big problem with signaling when it comes to taking time off.

Employers are very likely to question the motivation and commitment of workers who ask for more time off (or even make the most of the time off they are entitled to), even if they are just trying to improve their work-life balance. private life.

Again, regulations that require workers to take time off could be good to all

In general, I believe that Americans work too long hours and that we would be happier as a society if we came at least partially close to European leisure requirements.

Unfortunately, I don’t see much chance of significant movement in that direction anytime soon.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I’ll be doing a column the day after Christmas.