Two million more workers can’t afford a holiday

The number of workers who can’t afford a week’s holiday has increased by more than two million, an analysis of EU data for the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) has found.

An estimated 39.7 million working people (15%) could not afford a week’s holiday away from home, either in their own country or abroad, in 2022 – up from 37.6 million (14%) in 2021.

The biggest increase in holiday poverty came in France, where almost a million more hardworking people were forced to stay at home. The biggest percentage point changes came in Ireland (+3.8%) and France (+2.5%).

Italy still has the highest number of workers who can’t afford a break (6.074.387) despite a decrease and the countries with the highest share of workers who can’t afford a holiday are Romania (36%), Cyprus (25%) and Greece (25%). Romania's situation is likely to have improved since then as the government has subsequently brought in a 23% increase to its minimum wage and strengthened workers' power to bargain collectively for better wages.

The figures for 2023 could be even worse following a record increase in the cost of holidays last summer combined with falling real wages across the EU last year due to profit-driven inflation.

Table 1: Ten countries with the highest percentage point change in the number of workers who can’t afford a holiday (see table 2 in notes for full list).

Source: Analysis of EU statistics on income and living standards microdata by the European Trade Union Institute, the independent research centre of the ETUC. Estimated as the proportion of workers who cannot afford a week’s holiday from the EU-SILC, and expressed in the number of people affected, rounded to the nearest 1000.

More holidays with collective bargaining

The findings show the need for the EU and member states to ensure all workers benefit from collective bargaining. Not only does collective bargaining deliver fairer pay, but workers who are covered also enjoy up to two weeks more holiday every year.

At least three million workers had been stripped of the benefits of collective bargaining since 2000, in part as a result of austerity policies, with the biggest falls coming in countries which have the highest levels of holiday poverty. While more recent statistics suggest an uptick in coverage, a lot of work remains to be done.

EU leaders have since adopted the Minimum Wage directive which requires all members states to promote collective bargaining and ensure that at least 80% of workers are covered by collective agreements. 

However, a new Eurofound report said “concrete actions to promote collective bargaining coverage were only detected in a small number of countries.”

The ETUC is warning member states that the deadline to put the Minimum Wages Directive into national law is on 15 November 2024.

Commenting on the findings, ETUC General Secretary Esther Lynch said:

“After working hard all year,  working people should be able to afford a holiday. A holiday is not a luxury, having time away with family is key for protecting the physical and mental health of workers along with providing valuable experiences for children.”

“The growth in the number of working class families who could afford a holiday was one of Europe’s great social advances of the 20th century. It improved the health and wellbeing of millions of people and contributed to a feeling of progress and optimism.

“These figures show how social progress is being reversed as a result of increased economic inequality.

“While the wealthy CEOs who caused profit-driven inflation were sunning themselves in luxury resorts at the height of the cost-of-living crisis, a single week’s holiday was beyond the means of forty million hardworking people and their families who struggled just to put food on the table.

“It is hardly a surprise to see rising anger in our societies in this context. Too many people are no longer seeing the benefits of Europe’s powerful economy in their everyday lives.

“We urgently need to raise the levels of workers covered by collective bargaining agreements. It is the best way of ensuring a working people receive a fair share of the wealth they create and can enjoy something as basic a week’s holiday rather than just struggling to survive.”    

Notes

Statistical note: The data shows the share of people aged 18 to 64 who are employed and not able to afford a week’s holiday. It also shows the standard error (an indication of the uncertainty around that estimate), and combine it with information on the population on the 1st of January of 2021 and 2022 aged 18-64 to express this at the number of people aged 18-64 who are workers and not able to afford a holiday. We then use the standard error to create error bounds (95% confidence interval) around the estimate. This shows that on average in the EU 13.8% of people aged 18-64 in 2021 could not afford a week’s holiday. This corresponds to 37,589,980 workers who could not afford a week’s holiday (13.79% of the population aged 18-64), with error bounds between 37,273,344 and 37,906,616. By 2022 it had risen to 39,719,112 workers (error bounds between  39,397,468 and 40,040,756) so an increase by about 2,000,000 people.

Table 2: Countries where the number of workers who can’t afford a week’s holiday has increased