International Holiday Comparisons/FinancialCalendar.Com - Thousands of Holidays, No Vacations

	International Holiday Comparisons
	As every working stiff knows, most of the people have to work most of the time. In fact, for more than three-quarters of the year, at least 98% of the world is at work. But not all working stiffs are created equal, and the number of holidays you get depends on where you live.

	Best and worst

	The countries with the highest and lowest average number of holidays are:

Highest		Lowest
Country	No. of holidays	Country	No. of holidays
1. India	21.8	1. Bosnia	2.2
2. Iran	21.0	2. Romania	5.4
3. Nepal	20.9	3. Uzbekistan	6.2
4. Myanmar	19.2	4. Mongolia	6.2
5. Sri Lanka	18.1	5. Serbia	6.6

(Note: These counts show the number of holidays that fall on a weekday. Holidays that fall on a weekend are ignored. In making these and all other calculations on this page, we used bank holidays over the next 32 years in the principal financial center as a proxy for holidays in the country as a whole. This is obviously a simplistic assumption, since it ignores the effect of regional holidays and disparities between industries. The sample from which the above tables are drawn consists of approximately 170 countries, namely those for which we publish holidays.)

As a benchmark for comparison among the major financial centers, the US has an average of 9.1 holidays per annum, while the UK has 7.8 and Japan 15.2.

These averages can disguise some very significant volatility. For example, people in Morocco can enjoy anywhere from five to 17 holidays per year, while in Jordan the range is nine to 16. While these are extreme examples (caused in part by the fact that Muslim holidays can occur twice in some years), the number of holidays varies from year to year in virtually every country.

Worth the wait?

Holidays are often bunched together. (For more about the non-random nature of holidays, click here.) This means there can also sometimes be long gaps between them. The country with the longest gap between two regularly scheduled holidays in Bosnia, where residents sometimes have to go 731 days without a holiday. Next come Taiwan (353 days), followed by the Netherlands and Switzerland (333 days) and Qatar (286 days). Of course, these gaps may not occur every year if they are associated with a special alignment of fixed date holidays and weekends.

In fairness to Bosnia, we should point out that its standing as the country with the longest gap between holidays is due to a technicality. For the purpose of these calculations, we define holidays as those applying to the banking system. For reasons of its own, Bosnia has chosen to keep the banking system open on a number of days that are holidays for everyone else in the country.

Among all our published Centers, the prize for the longest period without a holiday goes to Clearstream and Euroclear. The unfortunates who work for these clearing houses will sometimes have to endure a holiday gap of a stunning 1,089 days (only one week short of three years).

At the other end of the spectrum, some Canadians never have to go more than 59 days between holidays, Marshall Islanders 67 days, Thais 74 days, Tajiks 76 days and Colombians and Jamaicans 77 days.

January, 2008