Why you should be wary of the unlimited vacation perk
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Companies are squeezing every efficiency out of their teams. More of them now figure the least they can do is give employees “unlimited" paid time off.
Yeah, right. “Unlimited PTO sounds great," says Karl Giese, who works in tech sales. “It’s complete B.S.
because you’re afraid to use it." The signs of efficiency are everywhere. Companies are laying off workers, calling people back to offices and cracking down on employee-handbook violations. At the same time, unlimited PTO is growing.
There is now no vacation cap at 7% of U.S. employers, according to human-resources trade group SHRM. That is a percentage point higher than when companies were throwing lavish pay and benefits packages at job candidates in 2022 and significantly more than the 1% of companies that had unlimited PTO in 2014.
Karl Giese says he didn’t take any vacation days last year, despite having unlimited PTO. The rise of unlimited PTO brings up an important question about the amount of time off you can really take. Most often, it depends on how good you are at your job, your company’s culture and whether you care what others think.
While a relatively small share of businesses offer unlimited PTO, the perk and how many workers feel about it is a mini referendum on the state of work-life balance. Giese, 35 years old, didn’t take a single vacation day last year while working at a 15-person startup. He says the company’s small size and hustle culture made him feel like he couldn’t step away, never mind take as many days off as he wanted.
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