The pto thing is because most office/tech jobs let you take unpaid time off too. Just means you won't make your full salary for the year based on the number of unpaid days you take.
Yeah it's pretty shit. Since some places they only offer 1 or 2 weeks vacation a year if you want a longer one you end up needing to take the unpaid time off.
Productivity and profits have steadily risen for decades while wages have hours worked have increased.
So business obviously were able to survive and thrive with more employees taking a larger slice of the profits. The businesses would be able to operate just fine.
Almost everyone has vacation in the summer (winter is cold and shit) so most office work slows down heavily during a few weeks and then picks up again during and after August..
Retail and stuff like that is obviously different.
Took my 3 weeks in July. It worked out well because our suppliers also slowed down significantly. The huge amounts of vacation the memes and braggarts claim just seemed ridiculous.
Here we get 25 days (5 work weeks) each year by law. Some get more; I don't know the average amount of days.
Apparently you get 28 days if you don't get overtime compensation.
In general 4 consecutive weeks are used during the summer months.
You also get paid more during vacation, for some reason.
All other EU countries have a minimum of 20 paid days.