A miracle occurred this summer. It didn’t involve the parting of seas or the ascension of the dead, but something far more remarkable: the publication of a study indicating that millennials are not lazy ingrates.

According to the results of an online survey released this month by Project: Time Off, a research initiative launched by the non-profit U.S. Travel Association, millennials are not, as is often argued, entitled and indolent, but precisely the opposite.

We work so hard, it turns out, we are overwhelmingly represented in a category that labour researchers have dubbed “work martyrs”: people so obsessively devoted to their professions, they refrain from taking hard-earned, paid, time off.

“Millennials,” the study reads, “are the most likely generation to forfeit time off, even though they earn the least amount of vacation days.”

Why is this?

Well, it could be that we are so annoyed by popular stereotypes about our idleness and apathy that we overcompensate in the workplace to dispel them.

Or just as likely, says Katie Denis, senior director and research lead at Project: Time Off, millennials refrain from taking vacations because they subsist in a precarious work environment, and they don’t want to rock the boat or be perceived as entitled.

Nobody’s job is safe, sure, but especially not a young person’s.

Denis describes the work martyr complex as “a little bit scary, because for a long time, we (Americans) took the same amount of vacation. It’s really just in the last 15 years that we’ve had this precipitous drop.”

In 2015, according to Project: Time Off, 55 per cent of Americans combined left 658 million vacation days unused.

“If that’s the kind of behaviour we are reinforcing,” says Denis, “where face time equals dedication and total commitment is measured quantitatively, not qualitatively, than we’re going to see (the trend) furthered over time.”

To curb this trend, Denis argues that employers of all ages should actively encourage subordinates to take vacation, not only for the sake of their employees but for their own sake too; time off, studies show, heightens productivity.

But what if the buck doesn’t stop with employers? What if the work-martyr complex is rooted in something else, besides precarious employment. What if it is just as much about technology?

After all, millennials entered a permanently connected work world; most of us have never experienced a professional life in which we weren’t able to contact to our bosses, colleagues and subordinates, instantaneously, after 9 p.m.

For Gen Xers and baby boomers, working remotely around the clock — whether from the privacy of a cottage dock or the chaos of a grocery store checkout counter — is a relatively new phenomenon.

For us, it’s all we’ve ever known.

This is a scary thought.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Because if we are martyrs as low- and mid-level office employees, what will we be like as bosses? “We know that 28 per cent of millennials are managers,” says Denis.

I wouldn’t be surprised if those young managers evolve into the most pious work martyrs office life has ever known.

Millennials are already notorious for trying to do away with the formalities and stodginess of the old work world — wear a suit, arrive at 9, leave at 5 — but in the absence of these things, we have championed an insidious corporate friendliness

What does this mean? Well, in our ideal world, you can bring your dog to work, wear what you like, and discuss your less-than-wholesome extracurricular activities with your boss.

But here’s the catch. The work never really stops.

If your boss is your “friend” he will have no reservations about flooding your inbox with unreasonable demands dressed up as amicable suggestions: “Hey I know it’s Thanksgiving — gourd emoji — but when you’re able do you think you could make those revisions real quick? Thx pal!”

Nowhere is this insidious friendliness more dominant than in the tech world, where lax work environments often turn out to be anything but relaxing.

Case in point: in 2015, Kickstarter put an end to its hyper-progressive policy of “unlimited vacation time” (a policy adopted by a number of tech firms in the United States) when it came to the company’s attention that rather than taking ample vacation time, employees were just confused by the policy, and in some cases too timid to use it to their advantage.

Ironically, says Denis, the prospect of unlimited time off usually serves to intensify the work-martyr complex. Give people unlimited vacation time, and they may be doubly afraid to take any.

Some millennials might rejoice that boundaries and decorum are eroding in the white-collar work world. Unfortunately, so too is a clear line between the professional and the personal. And that line, though it may appear cold and boring, is also what keeps us sane.