Are Americans vacation deprived? Depends how you define vacation.

This long Labor Day weekend, Americans are packing up their cars, mounting their kayaks and heading to the beach in a last-ditch effort to soak up the dwindling summer rays.

For the majority of America, it may be a vacation that’s long overdue.

In fact, 56% of Americans haven’t taken a vacation within the past year, according to a survey by Allianz Travel Insurance. That’s an increase from the previous year, when 52% of Americans reported no vacation.

To be clear, “vacation” means different things to different people. Allianz defines it as a trip of at least a week and that’s more than 100 miles from home. That means a trip from your home in Chicago's North Side to Milwaukee -- 92 miles -- wouldn’t qualify as a vacation. And sure, the Hamptons is just about 100 miles from Manhattan, but in order to make it a real vacation under these criteria, you’ve got to be out there for a week.

But shouldn’t these mini trips count for something? Increasingly, people may be forgoing longer, full-fledged vacation and opting for quick getaways that straddle long weekends. We’re also just taking less time off in general: nine million Americans took a full week off in July 1976 (July being the most popular month for summer vacation), compared with just seven million who took a week off in July 2014, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. All the more astonishing when you consider that 60 million more Americans working today than in 1976. Partly, perhaps, because of vacation guilt and partly because we want to show our bosses what hard workers we are -- no matter how many times we hear that taking a break from work is critical to our mental health.

Take this upcoming weekend, for instance: 35.5 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more, according to AAA Travel. Sure, we’re talking three days, maybe four or five if you take off a day before or after, but it still counts as precious time spent out of the office.

Now the danger, of course, is falling into the trap of the modern “vacation” that makes it easy to be connected to work while you’re supposed to be building sandcastles with your kids. According to a TripAdvisor survey, more than 90% of American respondents said they check work email while on vacation.

So whether you spend your weekend snorkeling, vegging out or running errands, it’s still a sacred opportunity to celebrate the American workforce with some much-deserved time away from the office. And, yes, that email really can wait until Tuesday morning.