Which Countries Have The Most Public Holidays?

Mercer recently released their comprehensive survey on national holiday entitlements around the world and so if you are planning to relocate abroad but also have an eye on work-life balance and holiday entitlements you might be interested in the findings of this survey.

Holiday Hotspots

India and Columbia had particularly generous holiday levels with both having 18 national holidays per year. Japan stands out amongst the larger developed nations as having the highest levels of national holiday with employees in this country enjoying 15 days public holiday a year. Finland has one of the highest national holiday allowances in Europe at 15 days a year.

Holiday Coldspots

Mexico has the least generous holiday entitlements, offering just 7 national holidays a year, but this is closely followed by the UK, Hungary and the Netherlands which have the second lowest public holiday allowances of 8 days. So, if you are thinking of relocating to these locations from somewhere with a higher national holiday allowance you might want to place greater emphasis on higher company holiday allowances when negotiating your package to make up for this natioanl holiday allowance shortfall.

You can see the full listing of national holidays by country below.

Figure 1: Table ranking the number of public holiday entitlements by country

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