A single national holiday can cost a major economy billions of dollars in output
While public holidays offer a welcome break for workers, they can strip billions from a nation's GDP, leading some countries to reconsider their traditional calendars to boost economic output.
A single national holiday can cost a major economy like Germany approximately 3.4 billion euros in lost production. In Europe, where countries average 12 to 15 public holidays annually, each day off results in a 0.23 percent hit to the national GDP. Because these dates often originate from medieval traditions, they create a significant fiscal drag that modern economists are beginning to quantify.
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