Singapore tops Asia-Pacific for taking—and actually using—it’s annual leave

It’s Friday, which means a good chunk of your team is either already on leave or quietly counting down the hours until they are. And if you work in Singapore, the odds of that are higher than almost anywhere else in the region.

New figures from Deel, drawn from more than 4,500 full-time employees in Asia-Pacific who requested time off in 2025, show that Singapore takes more paid time off than its regional peers—and is the most likely to use every last day. Singapore led with a median of 19 vacation days taken, ahead of Hong Kong (16.5 days), Australia (16 days), Indonesia and Malaysia (15.5 each), and South Korea (15 days).

Striking, given the typical entitlement was just 18 days. Plenty of people went over their allowance by tapping rollover days rather than letting them expire. And they used what they had: 57% of employees in Singapore used their full entitlement, and 77% used at least 80%—both the highest shares in the study. Hong Kong sat at 43% and 69%.

Flexibility helped. Employees in Singapore on flexible policies took 20.75 days versus 19 on fixed entitlements, a pattern echoed across Australia, India, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The numbers also reveal personality: single-day breaks dominated everywhere, but employees in Singapore leaned towards four-day or longer stretches, while Hong Kong favoured two-day escapes. Furthermore, a study titled The Impact of Vacation Length and Frequency on Enhancing Psychological Wellbeing links longer, uninterrupted breaks with lower burnout—so Singapore’s habit may be a more robust buffer against overwork.

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“In Singapore, we see that when people have both access and permission, they actually use their leave – and they use it in ways that help them properly switch off,” said Lauren Thomas, Economist at Deel. “Longer, planned breaks are becoming a feature of how people work, not an exception.”

The implication for employers, she argued, is that time off can no longer be treated as a line item that lives quietly in the policy document. “For employers, that means PTO can’t just sit in the handbook. It has to be part of how you design work, plan capacity, and think about wellbeing. The organisations that treat time off as a strategic lever, and not just an admin line item, are the ones that will be better placed to keep people healthy and businesses running smoothly,” she concluded.

So—enjoy the weekend. Preferably all of it.