The State of Annual Leave - Statistics for 2022 & 2023

Annual leave. Some of us savour and look forward to making the most of every single second of it, but according to our most recent survey of almost 1,500 UK workers, more than half of us don’t use all of our leave! So why do so many UK adults not take their annual leave? What are the most popular days of the year we book off work? And just how many of us have taken at least one full week off in the last 12 months? Here, we reveal all of the most up-to-date statistics, facts and figures on annual leave in the UK going into 2023.

Annual Leave in a Nutshell

Did you know that:

• 62% of UK workers didn’t take all of their annual leave in 2022.
• Only 1 in 5 UK employees get paid for unused annual leave.
• More than 1 in 10 UK workers say they didn’t take all of their annual leave because they felt pressured by management.
• Less than a third of US employees have had a whole week off work in the last year.
• New mums in the UK book 11 weeks off for maternity leave on average. Whilst those in the US take an average of just under 5 weeks off.
• Only 8% of workers in the UK have taken compassionate leave in the last year.
• Women are far more likely than men to use all of their annual leave (50% vs 28%)

What percentage of people use their annual leave allowance?

In December 2022, we surveyed 1,469 working UK adults to find out how much annual leave they’d left unused over the last 12 month period. The survey was conducted using Censuswide and found that:

• Less than 40% of UK adults took all of their annual leave allowance in 2022.
• The majority (over 60%) of UK workers didn’t take all of their holiday allowance.
• This means that over 18 million of the UK’s 29.7 million workers didn’t take the amount of leave they were entitled to in 2022.

The chart below shows the percentage of people who took all of their yearly annual leave allowance over the last 12 months vs those who didn’t.

Most common reasons why UK workers don’t use their annual leave

Our survey also asked respondents for the reasons why they didn’t take all of their annual leave allowance in the last year, posing the following question and answer options:

Think about your last year of work. If you left any annual leave unused, what were the reasons? (Tick all that apply):

• N/A - I used all my allowance
• I got paid for unused leave
• No specific reason
• Didn't want to take the leave
• Pressure from management
• Unsure
• Other

The findings revealed that:

• The most common reason why employees didn’t take all of their annual leave last year was because they got paid for any unused time off (18.6%).
• Nearly 12% say there’s no specific reason, and - believe it or not - another 11% said they did not want to use their annual leave allowances!
• At the same time, over 1 in 10 (10.5%) of UK workers sadly said that the reason they didn’t take their full annual leave last year was because they felt pressure from their management.

Are men or women more likely to use their leave allowances?

Our survey found that:

• Women are twice as likely to use all of their annual leave than men.
• As you can see from the graph, 49.2% of women used all of their leave allowance in 2022.
• Whilst just 27.7% of men used all of theirs.

Which age groups are most and least likely to use all of their annual leave?

Breaking things down by age, we see that:

• UK workers of older generations (aged 55 and over) are the most likely to use all of their annual leave allowance. More than half (58%) of those in this age category say they used all of their leave in 2022.
• In contrast, only 12% of younger workers (aged 18-24) used all of their leave allowances.
• As you can see from the graph, less than half of people aged between 18 & 54 used all of their annual leave.

Which UK regions take the most annual leave?

Throughout the UK regions, there are some significant differences in the amount of annual leave people took in 2022:

• The region that used the most of their annual leave was the South West, where half of workers took all of their allocated leave.
• Whilst the region that’s least likely to use all of their leave is London, where only 20% of workers took the leave they were entitled to.

The maps below show each UK region and the proportion of people who used all of their leave and the proportion of those who were paid for unused leave.

Who’s more likely to be paid for unused annual leave?

Our findings revealed that when it comes to those who did not use all of their annual leave allowances:

• Men were far more likely than women to be paid for unused leave.
• 34.3% of men, who didn’t take all of their annual leave, said they’ve been paid for unused leave.
• Whilst just 23.4% of women who didn’t use their leave said the same.

Our survey also found that age groups that are least likely to use all of their leave are also the most likely to be paid for unused leave.

Which day of the year do most people book off work for their annual leave?

So we know the reasons why people don’t always use all of their annual leave allowances. But when it comes to the leave we do take - which date is most popular? Is it during the summer when peoples’ children are off school and they’re jetting off to sunny destinations as a relaxing break from work? Or is it closer to the end of the year in the lead up to Christmas, when many of us make plans with family and friends and have some days left to use up?

To find out, we conducted an analysis of the Timetastic database, which contains annual leave data from approximately 200,000 users. Our analysis found that:

• The most popular day that people take off work tends to be between Christmas and New Year.
• The day people are least likely to book off work tends to be in January, the only exception to this was 2020 when the least popular day was in April.

	Most common day booked off work	Least common day booked off work
2022	29th December	23rd January
2021	29th December	24th January
2020	29th December	19th April
2019	27th December	6th January
2018	24th December	7th January

What’s the most popular day of the week for annual leave?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, our analysis found that Mondays and Fridays are the most popular days of the week people book off for annual leave. This is very likely to be due to people wanting to take long weekends away or simply extending their weekends by a day.

Which countries take the most annual leave at a time?

Taking a few days off for a long weekend here and there is great, but many people find that it’s difficult to fully switch off from work and recharge without having at least one full week off. To find out just how common it is for people to take a week or more off work at a time and to see which countries do this most often, we analysed Timetastic user data in countries that have 1,000 or more users of the platform.

The analysis looked at data from employees in the UK, Ireland, Spain, the US, Canada, Netherlands, Germany and Australia and found:

• Germans are big fans of longer breaks from work, with 69% having taken 1 week or more off work in the last 12 months.
• This is followed by the Netherlands, where 58% have taken at least 1 week off over the past year.
• Spain, the UK, Ireland and Australia are also amongst the countries that take the most leave at a time.
• Whilst the US falls miles behind the rest, with less than a third (31%) of workers having had a whole week off work in the last year.

So why is this? What factors influence the number of days leave we take off at a time?

Well, it’s difficult to say exactly - but one thing we do know is that the countries where people take more leave at a time (such as Germany and the Netherlands) have some of the highest minimum paid holiday allowances worldwide. Whilst the number of days paid leave entitlement in countries such as the US and Canada are much lower (or even non-existent!)

• As you can see from the graph below, the country where workers are least likely to take a week or more off work is the US, as less than a third of people say they’ve done this in the past year. US workers also have zero days minimum paid holiday allowance.
  
• In contrast, over two thirds of German workers have taken a week or more annual leave at a time over the last year, with Germany having a generous 30 days minimum paid holiday allowance per year.

The graph above shows the following data:

Country	Percentage who took 1 week or more annual leave at a time in the last year	Minimum paid holiday allowance
USA	31%	0 days
Canada	40%	16 days
Australia	51%	30 days
Ireland	51%	30 days
UK	52%	28 days
Spain	52%	36 days
Netherlands	58%	28 days
Germany	69%	30 days

Maternity Leave Statistics

So how about maternity leave? How does the amount of leave new mums take differ from country to country?

Our analysis found that:

• On average, new mothers take between 9 & 10 weeks off (65 days) at a time when booking maternity leave.
• Mothers in the UK book, on average, 11 weeks at a time maternity leave.
• Whilst in the US it is just under 5 weeks at a time.

As you can see from the table, mothers in the USA have no statutory entitlement to maternity leave. This could explain why there are so few bookings per user and the booking lengths are less than half that of the UK.

Maternity leave bookings by country
	Bookings	Users	%	Minimum maternity leave allowance	Average booking length
UK	8444	166792	5%	39 weeks	77 days
US	197	6855	3%	0 weeks	33 days
Ireland	449	3988	11%	26 weeks	26 days
Jersey*	170	371	45%	52 weeks**	10 days
Australia	105	1058	10%	18 weeks	62 days

*small sample of 371 users
**shared between both parents

Paternity Leave Statistics

So how about paternity leave? It may not surprise you to find that new Dads will typically take far less paternity leave than new mums take in maternity leave. But how big is the difference?

Our analysis found that:

• On average, new fathers take 13.68 days paternity leave on average (across users in all countries) but this is heavily weighted to the UK.
• Fathers in the UK specifically book, on average, 17.5 days.
• According to findings by People Management, only a third of fathers take paternity leave in the UK (204,000 paternity leave claimants in 2021-222 vs 636,000 maternity leave claimants).

The fact that Paternity leave is so weighted to the UK perhaps reflective of the 2 weeks ordinary paternity leave that new fathers are allowed to take.

Adoption Leave Statistics

There is hardly any leave classified as adoption leave in our data set. Here are the key figures:

• Fewer than 0.05% of users have taken Adoption Leave.
• Those who do take Adoption Leave take an average of just 62 days.

This is despite the fact that you have the same leave allowance in the UK for adoption as you do for maternity/paternity.

But can we explain these figures?

Well, this is likely to be down to the fact far fewer adoptions take place than births.

In 2021 there were 2,870 adoptions in the UK vs 624,828 live births in the UK in 2021.

There are around 217 live births for every adoption in the UK. If you add adoptions and births together, adoptions make up less than 0.5% of the total number.  This can help explain why there are so few requests for adoption leave.

Bereavement and Compassionate Leave Statistics

Around 8% of our users (15,312 people) have taken compassionate leave or bereavement leave in the last 12 months.

In terms of the law in the UK, there is no statutory entitlement to compassionate leave except in the specific circumstances of the death of a child.

Here are the key statistics surrounding compassionate leave:

• 8% of our users have taken compassionate or bereavement leave in the past 12 months.
• The average length of time taken off is 1.6 days.

Individual days off for funerals are likely to be classified as compassionate leave as well.

Conclusion

What’s clear from our 2023 State of Annual Leave analysis is that more flexible statutory leave allowances (unsurprisingly) result in people taking more time off. Yet even when annual leave is a requirement, not everyone uses their whole allowance for a whole host of reasons.