4th chart says that the transatlantic gap is "roughly a full working month" but it's about 10 working days so half a month. Also, it would be helpful to have the total number of vacation days taken and sick days to see whether people use sick days to compensate for fewer vacation days granted.
Yep that probably explains it! It would be interesting to see if other Orthodox countries have the same patterns, but I don’t think we have enough data for any of the other ones that officially celebrate it in January. It is interesting that even countries like the UAE have December peaks, although I attribute that to the New Year holiday
Maybe if you group them all (Serbia + Georgia + Kazakhstan) you might get enough data. UAE: I assume most Deel's employees in the UAE are in Dubai and are non-UAE nationals, so at least one-third of them are non-Muslim (and probably even higher, I would not be surprised if the majority of them are non-Muslim). And even many Muslims might work remotely for Western companies that are off for Christmas, so they might as well take the week off if no one is working in their company.
The country is only like 10% Emirati as a whole, so definitely a lot of them aren’t UAE natives. The most common nationality, both in the country as a whole and in our own data, is Indian. Then we also have a lot of Brits. (We do have a decent number of Emiratis though, and not everyone works remotely - lots of non remote, local payroll employees included). So yes you are definitely on the right track I think!
RTT days are counted as vacation days, and most people aren’t using all their RTT days + PTO. I lived in France and I definitely don’t know a lot of people who use all of both…it’s quite a lot! (the 34 days is the median number of days granted, btw, not the legal minimum)
Interesting, as I have been working in France for 15 years and I do not know a single person that leaves RTTs on the table per year, let alone their minimum granted weeks per year. Whether in startups, mature companies or SMBs.
That is why I am asking if the % is based on quantitative data :-)
Oh hmm, I’m surprised you found the 34 days number surprising then - it’s pretty close to other figures I’ve seen and is basically just the minimum 25 days off + the typical 8 RTT days + 1 extra day which could be wedding leave, seniority leave, birthday leave, or even just companies deciding to grant an extra day off above the minimum!
Even saving a half day would mean not taking 100% of one’s leave. I’m glad you found it interesting - that’s why sharing this sort of data is so important! At the end of the day there’s not much hard data on this topic, so it’s great to be able to share some!
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4th chart says that the transatlantic gap is "roughly a full working month" but it's about 10 working days so half a month. Also, it would be helpful to have the total number of vacation days taken and sick days to see whether people use sick days to compensate for fewer vacation days granted.
Great idea! There are a lot of different ways to look at this but I actually looked at likelihood of taking sick leave and % of sick leave requests that fell into different leave length buckets (slightly different from the chart we had here) in this article: https://deelworks.substack.com/p/how-different-cultures-actually-use?r=41q7k&utm_medium=ios
(Note: it only has approved PTO through December 4, 2025, so it’s missing anything in 2025 that was approved after Dec 4)
TLDR: North Americans take a lot less sick time even when they work for the same companies as Europeans.
Armenians celebrate Christmas on January 6, might explain the exception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_Armenia#Non-working_legal_holidays_and_remembrance_days
Yep that probably explains it! It would be interesting to see if other Orthodox countries have the same patterns, but I don’t think we have enough data for any of the other ones that officially celebrate it in January. It is interesting that even countries like the UAE have December peaks, although I attribute that to the New Year holiday
Maybe if you group them all (Serbia + Georgia + Kazakhstan) you might get enough data. UAE: I assume most Deel's employees in the UAE are in Dubai and are non-UAE nationals, so at least one-third of them are non-Muslim (and probably even higher, I would not be surprised if the majority of them are non-Muslim). And even many Muslims might work remotely for Western companies that are off for Christmas, so they might as well take the week off if no one is working in their company.
The country is only like 10% Emirati as a whole, so definitely a lot of them aren’t UAE natives. The most common nationality, both in the country as a whole and in our own data, is Indian. Then we also have a lot of Brits. (We do have a decent number of Emiratis though, and not everyone works remotely - lots of non remote, local payroll employees included). So yes you are definitely on the right track I think!
20% using all of their leaves in France ? The sample must be overly biased against reality.
Also in France the legal minimum is 5 weeks (25days) and not 35 (that comes with special status). So unsure about where this data comes from ?
RTT days are counted as vacation days, and most people aren’t using all their RTT days + PTO. I lived in France and I definitely don’t know a lot of people who use all of both…it’s quite a lot! (the 34 days is the median number of days granted, btw, not the legal minimum)
Interesting, as I have been working in France for 15 years and I do not know a single person that leaves RTTs on the table per year, let alone their minimum granted weeks per year. Whether in startups, mature companies or SMBs.
That is why I am asking if the % is based on quantitative data :-)
Oh hmm, I’m surprised you found the 34 days number surprising then - it’s pretty close to other figures I’ve seen and is basically just the minimum 25 days off + the typical 8 RTT days + 1 extra day which could be wedding leave, seniority leave, birthday leave, or even just companies deciding to grant an extra day off above the minimum!
Even saving a half day would mean not taking 100% of one’s leave. I’m glad you found it interesting - that’s why sharing this sort of data is so important! At the end of the day there’s not much hard data on this topic, so it’s great to be able to share some!
The number of days is not surprising per se, but I believe the way they are presented can be mistaken as the minimal number of days for each french.
Anyway thanks for your work on this !