Majority of Americans Not Planning on Taking a Summer Vacation This Year

The great American summer vacation is on its way out, as our vacation deficit keeps on building year after year.

One study earlier this year said that workers who are given paid time off had an average 3.2 days of unused vacation time in 2013. Another study from last year said Americans collectively failed to take more than five hundred million (577,212,000) available days of vacation. Yet another said Americans get half the vacation time yearly as Russians do. Go figure.

And it looks like that vacation deficit will be not bridged this Summer of 2014. Skift decided to ask if Americans were planning on taking vacation in the upcoming summer season this year, and the answers won’t make our overworked lives any easier.

Major takeaway: According to a Skift online survey of adult Americans, majority don’t intend on taking a vacation this summer: about 63 percent said they won’t be taking a vacation this summer at all, and out of that, more than half said they couldn’t afford it. Only about 15 percent of Americans say they will take a long summer-vacation-of-yore this year. About one-fifth of Americans do plan on taking some long weekends over the summer, if that counts for something.

Important: This single-question survey — not served to Skift users — was administered to the U.S. internet population from Apr 17-20, 2014 through Google Consumer Surveys, with 1005 responses. The methodology is explained here. See previous Skift Surveys here.

The full results and breakdown by gender, age, geography and other criteria, below.

The topline result:

Gender breakdown: almost equally overworked.

Age-breakdown: Surprisingly, it seems the youth are busy working this summer.

Region-wise: Overall, seems like Midwest is more overworked than other American regions.

On urban-rural divide: not much to divide, we’re all in the same boat.

Salary-wise breakdown: Not surprising, the low and mid income ones among us have no time for vacation, the rich do.