Why The U.S. Badly Needs A Summer Holiday

Let’s not kid ourselves; working our bodies to the bone is destroying us.

Photo by Ethan Robertson on Unsplash

It’s the first full week of fall. The air is crisp and, after a long-awaited summer, we’re supposed to be feeling refreshed. But in the U.S. right now, people are absolutely fried. Four million people have quit their jobs for four months running, and labor shortages continue even as federal unemployment benefits dry up. Speak to people who’ve stayed at work, and they’re jealous of the quitters. Many want out too.

This is what a society with a deeply unhealthy work culture looks like. It began with the Blackberry years ago, but work is now in our pockets at all times and perpetually demands our attention. The office just appropriated many of our homes too, eliminating the barrier that once made management think twice before making the “small asks” that always land during scarce moments of downtime. Overwork pervades. And so workers are rebelling. No wonder.

To stop this spiral, we must rethink the fundamentals of our workplace, and we ought to start with time off. To keep people persistently engaged with work and maintain their paid time off allotment to the same 10, 15, or even 20 days that existed before work was everywhere is completely unreasonable. (And some managers — you know who you are — don’t…