(BLOOMBERG) - 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. That's six days of paid time off (PTO) left on the table - the equivalent of handing a week's salary back to your employer. When you consider that the United States has the rich world's stingiest vacation policies, this becomes even more depressing. Other forms of paid leave - like family leave - also see a significant number of people leaving time on the table. Especially men. Clearly, Americans think they can't afford to take time off, even when their firms are paying them to take it. But in many years of looking, I've seen no data to suggest such fears are justified. Some research on Americ...