> earns 7 sick days
Including sick days makes the calculation worse, not better. Sick days typically don't exist in Europe. If you're sick, you obviously just don't go to work. What's the point of infecting the whole office?
On average, workers in Europe take about 2 to 3 weeks off each year due to sickness in addition to their vacation. In fact, if you're sick during vacation, that doesn't count as vacation time, at least in some European countries.
Can confirm in non-European country. In Dominican Republic they don't count either
2-3 weeks is probably an average skewed by burnt out (or seriously sick, cancer) people taking 9 months to get better
Except for some drastic cases I've not seen people taking more than 2/3 single days a year.
In most places in Europe the first sick days are not comped, so any missed day is a missed paid day. When social security comes into play they tend to pay the base pay of the position.
That would mean that if you miss a week because of an illness you might see a salary reduction close to a fifth of your monthly salary. That's something that most people don't have the luxury.
Apart of that most companies treat any medical leave after the third (yearly) as suspicious, which needs extra investigation.
So as we might not have a limit, and it's relatively paid, most people do meagre use of it.
I included them to show that, on average, PTO does not need to be used for sick time and to show that the vacation time is vacation time.
> "workers in Europe take about 2 to 3 weeks off each year due to sickness in addition to their vacation"
It looks like in Germany it's 20 days a year - https://www.dw.com/en/germany-sick-days-absentees-mental-hea...
Are you all really that sick? Shouldn't the availability of lots of sick time and your "superior" healthcare system decrease your illness levels? Doesn't seem to make any sense to me.