Leave by country / Argentina
Argentina annual leave entitlement
How much paid leave people in Argentina get, what happens to unused days, and what you owe when someone leaves — in plain English, whether you run a team there or work on one.
Argentina guarantees 14 calendar days of paid annual leave — about 10 working days on a five-day week — for employees with up to five years of service, rising to 21, 28 and 35 calendar days at five, ten and twenty years, under Article 150 of the Ley de Contrato de Trabajo. Leave must be granted between October and April, cannot be paid in cash while employed, and proportional untaken leave is paid when the contract ends.
Disclosure: some software links on this page are affiliate links. If you sign up through one, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend tools we have set up and used, and commission never affects placement or verdicts. Not legal advice: this page summarises publicly available state agency guidance for general information. Verify with the linked agency or an employment attorney before acting on it.
What the law actually says
Article 150 grants paid annual leave in calendar days that rises with seniority: 14 days for up to five years of service (about 10 working days on a five-day week), 21 days from five to ten years, 28 from ten to twenty, and 35 beyond twenty. The employee must have worked at least half the working days of the year to earn the full period; otherwise leave accrues at one day for every 20 days worked. Leave starts on a Monday, must be granted between 1 October and 30 April, and is paid in advance at the salary divided by 25 per day, which makes vacation pay slightly higher than normal pay.
Worth knowing: If the employer has not granted the leave by 31 October, Article 157 lets the employee take it unilaterally after giving notice — but leave not taken by the end of the concession period is lost, and the law forbids paying cash instead except when the contract ends.
What happens to unused leave in Argentina
Argentine leave is meant to be taken in the season it belongs to: the employer must grant it between 1 October and 30 April, and an employee whose leave has not been scheduled by 31 October may fix the dates unilaterally with 45 days’ notice. Leave that is neither granted nor taken in that window lapses rather than accumulating, and it cannot be replaced by money while the relationship continues. On termination for any reason, Article 156 requires payment of the leave earned proportionally in the current year and not taken.
When employment ends, the untaken balance must be paid. This is the rule across the European Union and Australia, and it is the sharpest contrast with the United States, where whether unused time is paid out depends entirely on which state the employee works in.
If you run a team in Argentina
- Write the entitlement into every contract. At least 10 days; more is fine, less is void. Collective agreements may add to it.
- Track accrual and carryover to the day, with a record of every approval. When someone leaves, the untaken balance is money you owe, and you will need to show how you got to the number.
- Budget for the payout. Every unused day on the books is a liability at that person's current pay rate — it does not disappear at year end.
If you work in Argentina
- Check your contract gives at least 10 days. Anything less is unenforceable.
- Keep your own record of approved leave. Payroll systems get changed; your notes don't.
- When you leave, untaken statutory leave must be paid out. It cannot be forfeited.
Countries with the same 10-day minimum
Calculating an employee's balance
Entitlement is the starting point; the working number is what an individual has actually accrued at a given date. Our accrual calculator converts an annual entitlement into a per-pay-period figure and a current balance.
Tracking Argentina leave correctly
Because untaken leave is money the employer owes, the balance has to be provable. Spreadsheets fail at exactly the moment they matter — when someone disputes what they were owed on their last day and nobody can reconstruct the record.
For a single-country team, Leavo handles Argentina accrual rules, carryover and approvals with a full audit trail. If you employ people in more than one country, statutory entitlements, carryover rules and payout obligations differ in every one — that is the case for a platform like Deel that handles multi-country employment rather than leave alone. We compare the options in our leave management software guide.
Argentina annual leave: common questions
How many paid annual leave days are employees entitled to in Argentina?
10 working days is the statutory minimum in Argentina, equivalent to 2 weeks on a five-day working week, under Ley de Contrato de Trabajo (Ley 20.744), Arts. 150–157. Employers and collective agreements may grant more, never less.
Must unused annual leave be paid out when employment ends in Argentina?
Yes. Payment in lieu of untaken statutory leave is required when the employment relationship ends in Argentina. During employment, statutory leave must be taken as time off and cannot be exchanged for cash.
Can an employer in Argentina refuse a leave request?
An employer can usually influence when leave is taken for operational reasons, but cannot deny the entitlement itself. The right to the minimum number of days is statutory and cannot be contracted away.
Do public holidays count towards the 10-day entitlement in Argentina?
No. Public holidays are separate from the 10-day statutory annual leave entitlement in Argentina.
Source
Primary source: Ley de Contrato de Trabajo (Ley 20.744), Arts. 150–157. Statutory minimums change, and collective agreements frequently exceed them — confirm against the current text before acting. See our methodology.