Unlimited paid time off (PTO) has become an increasingly popular benefit for companies to attract and keep top talent.
However, its popularity is on the decline, according to new data from Indeed’s job postings.
As of June, only 2.9 percent of job postings had unlimited PTO on Indeed, compared to 8.8 percent in March 2022.
Why It Matters
While unlimited PTO is now more common in the workforce, the boundaries around the benefit can be unclear.
Often, workers do not know if that actually means it’s unlimited and they could end up taking less time off than they would with more traditional PTO offerings.
What To Know
Unlimited PTO has declined over the course of several years, according to Indeed’s data.
From June 2020 to June 2021, it initially shot up with a 103 percent boost in jobs offering the benefit on the Indeed platform.
“From a company standpoint, unlimited PTO helps reinforce a performance-over-presence mindset. It removes the need to track accruals and eliminates end-of-year ‘use it or lose it’ stress,” Jeremy Yonan, vice president of Total Rewards at Indeed, told Newsweek.
“But more importantly, it reflects a cultural shift toward flexibility—one that’s increasingly expected by today’s workforce. Still, it’s not without its challenges. If left unchecked, unlimited PTO can create inconsistencies across teams, or even burnout in high-performing employees who don’t feel they can disconnect.”
The next year, from June 2021 to June 2022, the unlimited PTO offers increased by 64 percent. However, starting that year and into the next, there was a decline of 40 percent, signaling employers may have started backing off on offering the benefit.
Still, there was a steady uptick in companies deciding that unlimited PTO was a good idea from June 2023 to June 2024, when job postings listing the benefit rose by 13 percent. However, since last year, they declined by 6 percent.
“Since we’re currently in an employer’s market, companies feel less pressure to attract new talent with perks like unlimited PTO—unlike in 2022 during the ‘Great Resignation,'” Indeed economist Allison Shrivastava told Newsweek. “More significantly, the decline in unlimited PTO offerings may be tied to the sharp downturn in software development jobs, a sector where this benefit was especially common.”
Unlimited PTO has long been a double-edged sword, HR consultant Bryan Driscoll said.
“Without guardrails or a culture that encourages time off, most workers end up taking less vacation, not more,” Driscoll told Newsweek. “Employers love that—it means no accruals, no payouts and no disruptions. It’s become common because it sounded good on paper and cost employers nothing additional. Now that the labor market is shifting and employers have more power, there’s no need to keep up the charade.”
What People Are Saying
Jeremy Yonan, VP of Total Rewards at Indeed, told Newsweek: “What’s interesting is that while unlimited PTO can sound like a generous policy, it doesn’t always lead to more time off being taken. In fact, sometimes it’s the opposite. Without defined boundaries or cultural norms, employees might feel uncertain about what’s ‘too much.’ They might worry that using too much time off could impact how they’re perceived or evaluated.”
Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek: “One of the biggest benefits of the pandemic era was more employers offering increased paid time off to give employees a more flexible schedule. However, in recent years, those policies have started to be scaled back, as more employers want their employees in the office the majority of the time. Unfortunately, this pandemic era perk is one that more than likely won’t return for many jobs given recent trends.”
HR consultant Bryan Driscoll told Newsweek: “The drop in unlimited PTO doesn’t surprise me because it was never about generosity from employers. It was about optics and control. Companies jumped on the unlimited PTO bandwagon to appear progressive without actually increasing time off.”
What Happens Next
While unlimited PTO may remain a way for employers to lure in and keep workers, it’s likely to change in the coming years, Yonan said.
“I don’t think unlimited PTO is going away. If anything, I believe it’s evolving,” Yonan said. “Companies are starting to take a more thoughtful approach—layering in minimum time-off requirements, tracking usage trends and training managers to support time-off conversations with empathy and consistency. We’re also seeing companies experiment with broader time-off strategies, like global reset days or sabbaticals, to complement unlimited PTO and address well-being more holistically.”
Many workers are beginning to become more skeptical of the unlimited PTO offering, unless it’s carefully managed by companies.
“Unlimited PTO will stick around as a status symbol for white-collar jobs in tech or startups trying to lure talent,” Driscoll said. “But smart workers see through it. Real benefits are measurable: clear policies, minimum time off mandates and leadership that actually takes their own vacation. Anything else is simply performative wellness.”
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