Employees Taking Fewer Holidays

[Mulboyne]

Yomiuri: Taking time off not so easy
As many company employees go on their midsummer holidays, the recently released 2008 white paper on leisure might help people think about how to best appreciate and enjoy their vacations...Employees' working hours last year totaled 1,850, a decrease of 50 hours compared with 10 years ago. However, these shorter working hours are misleading, as they are mainly due to an increase in the number of nonregular employees such as temporary staff and part-timers. For example, the working hours of permanent employees actually increased by 10 hours from 2006 to 2,033 hours last year, due to a shortfall of full-time workers and other reasons...16.3 percent of respondents said their leisure time increased in 2007, 2.5 percentage points up from the previous year, while 27.8 percent of respondents said they had less leisure time, up 0.9 percentage point...It also has become difficult for employees to use annual paid holidays, which are secured by the Labor Standards Law. On average, employees took 46.6 percent of their paid holidays in 2007, when the average number of annual paid holidays was 17.7 days, a record low. The rate has been declining since it peaked in 1993, when employees took 56.1 percent of their paid holidays...more...