As a Brit who worked in US late 90s-early 00s , some things I noticed: (a) US was 40 hrs/wk, equiv to 3 weeks extra at work per year compared to UK's 37-37.5 standard hrs. (b) Plus sometimes "yeah, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in at the weekend, m'kay", although you can simply refuse. What they gonna do, fire you? Maybe, but maybe not if you got skills and are doing useful work the rest of the time. (c) Compared to UK, in USA people seemed to waste tons of time at work, faffing about, pointless meetings, playing table football, blatantly making personal phone calls e:g to sort out insurance or something, presenteeism, just being there because you're meant to, but too tired to do anything useful, fixing bugs that wouldn't have existed had people gone home at sensible time and not made mistakes under pressure. I got extra holidays by various means including job-hops, 1 was by choice, other the place went bust, took some unpaid leave too. 1 year only had 4 weeks vacation, but quit that job and did long road trip the following year. Many Americans seemed to get their fair share of vacation by job-hopping, contracting, even quitting job to go travelling then call the same employer when they felt like coming back. If you stay in the same job for years your vacation entitlement is rubbish. The problem of course happens if you have a family and need some stability. But I suppose if you're frugal, don't have a huge mortgage, spouse has good skills too, you might both be able to keep job-hopping if that's what it takes to get decent time off. Whole system seems a bit daft to me really.