Increasing number of workers cannot afford a holiday, up 1 million in one year

Brussels – Working and not being able to afford to go on holiday, a paradox and a nightmare for more than 41.5 million workers in the EU, and the figure is rising. Sounding the alarm is the ETUC, the European Trade Union Confederation, in a study carried out for the period associated with holidays and relaxation. Unfortunately, for many, this is not possible, and indeed, the problem is affecting an increasing number of people. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of families who have to give up the seaside or the mountains because they cannot afford it has increased by more than a million. 

The figures speak for themselves: in 2022, 40,529,920 workers declared that they could not afford to go on holiday, and at the end of 2023, this number had reached 41,576,504, an increase that, when read in percentage terms, is 2.6 per cent, but when read in absolute terms, is 1,046,584. The long-standing problem of working poverty reemerges, a phenomenon already highlighted by Eurostat years ago.In short, work is no longer enough to escape poverty, and sacrifices and deprivation are increasing. 

“This further shameful increase in holiday-related poverty puts the onus on politicians to act when they return from their summer holidays,” attacks Esther Lynch, ETUC general secretary. “After working hard all year, it is the least that workers should expect to be able to afford and should not be allowed to become a luxury for the few,” she adds. She then attacks, “Our social contract continues to crumble due to growing economic inequality.” Because she criticises, “more and more people cannot afford a holiday, when, at the same time, dividends have risen 13 times faster than salaries and CEOs have paid themselves over 100 times more than the average worker.”