Hypothesis and considerable variables

            One of the most common employee benefits is vacation time or paid time off. Undoubtedly, one would expect employees to take all their vacation days, especially if paid, as it is a popular benefit and luxury of working. Data shows within the last five years, surprisingly enough, more Americans are taking fewer vacation and paid time off days (Kiplinger, 2016). Our research study is designed to further explore this trend of a decrease in spent vacation time for American workers. Furthermore, we acknowledge there are numerous variable that come into consideration when understanding the downfall. For example, income and budget, rollover policies, family size, destination attractiveness, and living location all have an impact on how often American workers are taking vacation. One variable that has potential to demonstrate a strong correlation to less taken vacation time is budget. Specifically, what impact does holding a budget or having budget restrictions hold on the amount of vacation time Americans are taking on average? No matter the vacation policy in the workplace, American workers are spending more time in the office and working from home than actually taking time away from their work lives. Looking into the last five years, data supports claims on budget impacting the amount of vacation time taken by American workers. “Reportedly, research from Kimble Applications shows aht 47% of Americans did not take all their vacation time in 2017 and 21% left more than five vacation days on the table (Lipman, 2018). Given the extensive data and research, our hypothesis is that Americans are taking fewer vacations primarily due to budget.

Dependent Variables: In our selected group, participates report to us their most recent five years annual vacation days. We would align our results to compare with their maximum annual vacation days allowance.

Independent Variables: In our selected group, our main independent variables is budget of employees and employee's household.

        In the economic history of America, wages has been changed largely through economic influences, and companies suffered as well as employees, employees experienced wage cutbacks and layoffs in multiple industries and years. While economic starting booming, and there’s still unstable factors might change all. Employees need to think about finance situation beyond all other factors for taking vacations, therefore, budget is the most important and first independent variables we’re doing research at.

        Besides wages or incomes for employees and their household, their expenses for themselves and their household will cut down a lot of their savings, therefore, a budget is not just simply how much money they earn through work, but more, budget is about how much employees could actually save up for vacation use after all other necessary expenses for living.

        A 2017 GoBankingRates survey found that millennials between 18 and 24 years old had less than $1,000 in savings, which doesn't leave a lot of room for discretionary spending. Nearly half of respondents had nothing saved at all.

        Based on literature research results, we think budget restrictions cause Americans take less vacations. And we will pursue our deep research by conducting survey using those two identified variables.