Most US jobs base vacation time on years of service. Thus, when I started my former job (for state government), I got 13 workdays vacation time per year, as well as 13 sick leave days, which could be accumulated without limit. Vacation time was limited to 30 days, after that much had accumulated without being used, no more accrued. I lost accrual of vacation time just once in 32 years, and it was about 8 hours that I lost. When I retired, I was accumulating at the rate of 27 workdays per year.

Obviously, the US system tends to reward workers who don't move between jobs very much. It would have been nice to have more vacation time when I was younger and had children at home. In the latter years of my employment, I was hard pressed to use all my vacation time, so used it in lieu of sick leave. One nice thing about this was that, when I retired, I was entitled to payment for half my accumulated sick leave. One note: most employers in the US don't have vacation and sick leave policies as liberal as this, and, in fact, the state has eliminated the payment of sick leave at retirement for anyone hired after September 1980.