Eliminating public holidays is all the rage. In July, French Prime Minister François Bayroux proposed removing Easter Monday and Victory in Europe Day (May 8) from the list of 11 public holidays celebrated in the country. An outcry followed, with political leaders on both the left and right attacking his plan.
Bajru expressed the expectation that abolishing the holiday would help France ease pressure on its budget. He is not the only one who has come up with such an idea.
Earlier this year, Slovakia abolished one of its public holidays in an effort to improve its fiscal position. Before that, in 2023, Denmark abolished the celebration of Easter Monday. Copenhagen's reasoning was that it needed to create fiscal space to accommodate growing defense budgets.
US President Donald Trump has joined the trend on the other side of the Atlantic. On June 19, he wrote on his social media that "too many public holidays in America" are costing "billions of dollars."
Many interpreted it as a political statement, as Trump made the announcement on Juneteenth, which the Biden administration declared a national holiday in 2021.
Are countries with fewer public holidays really more economically productive?
Productivity depends on several factors
"The evidence to support this thesis is limited," Charles Cornes, senior economist at British consultancy Cebr, told DW. "Productivity depends less on the number of public holidays and more on factors such as labor efficiency, capital investment, labor skills and technology."
Scientific studies suggest that reducing the number of holidays only results in very small increases in GDP.
A 2021 study by Lucas Rosso and Rodrigo Andrés Vagner showed that public holidays can actually increase demand for some subcategories of GDP, but that there is only a small increase in GDP when holidays fall on weekends and are not replaced.
However, studies by the IMF and the German Bundesbank have found that any increase in GDP would be proportionally much smaller than the increase in the total number of working days.
In theory, a day off for a worker means that their productivity for that day is zero. And there's also the fact that productivity is generally reduced on days around public holidays, as many people take days off before or after holidays to increase their free time.
Although reducing the number of public holidays may lead to increased tax revenue for the government, there are counterarguments that days off in the long run increase the feeling of satisfaction among workers, which then affects their productivity.
"There is evidence to suggest that with fewer vacation days and fewer holidays, workers are at greater risk of burnout, which then leads to an overall decrease in worker satisfaction," Adevale May, an analyst at the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, tells DW.
Public holidays and paid vacation
The debate over public holidays is part of a broader discussion about working hours in general. Germany, the UK and the Netherlands are among countries struggling with their sluggish economic growth by trying to reverse the trend of reduced working hours.
However, abolishing public holidays is something quite separate from encouraging people to work more – for example in Germany, which is trying to encourage those who currently work part-time to work longer hours.
This usually causes far less reaction than the idea of completely abolishing some holidays.
When public holidays and statutory paid vacation days are added together, most OECD member countries have between 30 and 36 paid days off for workers per year, a 2020 study found.
The USA is an exception
Some of the countries with the most such combined days off, for example Austria (38), Denmark (36) and Finland (36), also have one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world.
The United States is the only OECD country without a statutory holiday. There are 11 public holidays, but many companies, primarily in retail, tourism and transport, work on these holidays because workers are not guaranteed paid days off.
Adevale May points out that all other OECD countries provide employees with statutory holidays without harming their overall economies. "These economies have done well while also allowing workers the right to take a holiday," May says, and assesses that this is one of the central arguments against President Trump's hypothesis that the US has too many "non-working holidays."
"More work has never been a problem in the United States - but the problem is creating an economy in which all workers and their families can feel supported, secure, and able to thrive," concludes DW analyst at the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute.
"If Germans worked fewer hours..."
Charles Corns of the British consultancy Cebr points out that it may be true that imposing an obligation on US companies not to work on a public holiday could have a negative economic effect on them.
"Hospitality and retail often see a surge in activity on these days, and this provides much-needed support to these traditional retailers as they face continued pressure from the growth of e-commerce."
Korns also emphasizes that worker productivity depends on other factors, and that it is not just a matter of hours worked.
"For example, if Germans worked fewer hours but maintained the same level of production for that shorter period, it would not harm the economy. It could actually be both socially and economically beneficial if people had more free time," concludes Charles Corns.
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