No sooner had Citigroup announced its new sabbatical policy – 12 weeks at 25 per cent pay for employees who’d been at the bank at least five years – than the debate erupted: In the highly competitive world of finance, would it be a career killer to take advantage of that kind of deal?

I’m not surprised some people asked. In 2018, the average American full-time employee earned 23 paid days off a year, but used only 17 of them, according to a study funded by the non-profit US Travel Association (USTA) using data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis.