The four-day Thanksgiving weekend remains a November tradition among most U.S. employers, although more than a third of surveyed establishments will require at least a few employees to report to work on the holiday, reveals the latest Bloomberg BNA survey of year-end holiday practices.
Nearly three out of four responding employers (73 percent) have scheduled both Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 22) and the following Friday (Nov. 23) as paid days off for all or most of the workforce this year, virtually unchanged from 2011 (72 percent) and 2010 (74 percent).
While nearly all employers (99 percent) have scheduled a paid day off for Thanksgiving Day, some workers will have to forego or postpone holiday dinners with family and friends.
This year, 36 percent of establishments will require at least some of their employees to work on the national holiday, a moderate increase in reported work requirements from the previous three years.
Thanksgiving work shifts were more common a decade or longer ago; nearly half of employers surveyed in 2002 required some employees to work on Thanksgiving Day.
Thanksgiving gifts from employers have waned somewhat since the mid-2000s, but a small circle of employers - manufacturers, especially - seem to be holding fast to their November traditions.
About one in 10 surveyed organizations will send workers home with a token of their appreciation in late November, in line with survey findings over the past half-decade but reflecting a modest decline from the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Manufacturers remain most generous with paid time off at Thanksgiving. More than nine out of 10 manufacturing companies (93 percent) have scheduled paid days off for both Thursday, Nov. 22 and Friday, Nov. 23.
A four-day weekend is on tap at about seven in 10 surveyed nonmanufacturing companies (69 percent) and roughly two-thirds of nonbusiness establishments (65 percent), including health care facilities and government agencies.
Workers in small companies stand a much better chance of a long Thanksgiving weekend than their colleagues in larger organizations.
Two paid days off for Thanksgiving have been scheduled by more than four out of five firms with fewer than 1,000 employees (81 percent); workers at less than three-fifths of larger organizations (56 percent) will be so fortunate.
Thirty-six percent of responding employers will impose holiday shifts on at least some of their workers, somewhat higher than in 2011 (29 percent), 2010 (29 percent), and 2009 (28 percent, an all-time low).
Despite the apparent increase, Thanksgiving shifts remain less common than they were a decade ago. In 2002, almost half of all responding employers (47 percent) had employees on the job for Thanksgiving, and reports of Thanksgiving work shifts consistently ran above 40 percent of firms from the mid-1990s through the early 2000s.
