Rest and recreation are fundamental to a healthy and balanced life. Two policies–long established as fundamental labor rights–can help ensure these conditions are accessible to all: paid annual leave and a guaranteed weekly day of rest. Along with providing time for relaxation and leisure, paid annual leave can be essential for meeting common needs not covered by other forms of leave, such as visiting family members, moving, or attending non-medical appointments. At least one guaranteed day of rest each week is likewise critical to workers’ physical and mental health. Research has shown that risks of occupational injury and major industrial accidents increase alongside consecutive work shifts, especially for night shifts or shifts of longer than eight hours.
Since 1970, the International Labor Organization (ILO) has established that all workers should have at least three weeks of paid annual leave. Even older ILO conventions–adopted in 1921 and 1956–provide that workers should have at least 24 hours of guaranteed rest each week. More recently, the ILO has made clear that these rights extend to workers who have historically been excluded from many labor protections, including domestic workers. Equal Futures has created an original database drawing on full-text legislation from all 193 UN member states to examine examine national-level protections for annual leave and weekly rest. This data, current as of January 2026, builds on data constructed more than a decade ago by the WORLD Policy Analysis Center. We are grateful to WORLD's foundation and for sourcing the updated full-text legislation used by Equal Futures' analysis team to construct the data.
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