How many weeks of vacation do you get annually, and can you roll any of it over?

I recently discovered that I had a ton of vacation time left and very little time to take it (we can’t carry vacation time to the following year). So, out of the 18 business days remaining this year, I’ll be working 8 of them.

In previous jobs, we could carry any vacation time over to the following year. The problem, I suppose, is that many people would do this (like I would) as a way of building in a small severance in case of a layoff.

How much vacation do you get per year, and can you carry it over, or is this practice a thing of the past? And how does this affect your workplace in December? Is there anyone there?