Vietnam third generous for paid leave in Southeast Asia

By Ha Phuong October 12, 2016 | 10:51 pm PT

But other countries in the region get far more public holidays.

Southeast Asian nations in general are not very generous when it comes to paid annual leave. On average, a Southeast Asian worker has 10 days off per year, compared to 20 in European countries.

The findings were based on each country’s labor law and mostly applied to employees working an average five-day week; a definitive comparison between nations was not possible as some have different entitlements for different workers.

On the whole, Vietnam was placed third in the region with 12 days statutory annual leave.

However, Vietnamese have only eight extra paid public holidays, while it is 27 in Cambodia and 19 in Malaysia. Even the workaholic nation of Singapore offers its workers 11 paid public holidays. Indonesians are not as lucky. The nation has no guaranteed paid public holidays on top of their 12 days of statutory annual leave.

With public holidays included, Vietnam falls to fifth place in the region after Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar and Laos.

The longest paid public holiday in Vietnam is the Lunar New Year, when all Vietnamese workers have at least three days off. But in recent years, Vietnamese workers have been offered a longer holiday to celebrate this special time of the year.

All countries in Southeast Asia are streets ahead of the U.S., where workers are not actually legally entitled to a single day of paid holiday. The law in the U.S. offers no guarantees of paid leave at all. Workers are given ten days for holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, although there is no guarantee they will be paid on these occasions. Mercifully, most employers do offer their staff paid annual leave though this is typically limited to just two weeks.

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