Possibly naive question, but why does accrued PTO count as money owed? You were going to have to pay salary if the person worked. If they leave/are exited, you were going to pay them notice which presumably is more than the amount of PTO they would have accrued.

I don't know the history of how it came to be, but the literal answer is "It counts as such because states regulate it." https://www.patriotsoftware.com/blog/payroll/pto-payout-laws...

This also means that if you're a multi-state company, you're under different legal regulations for how PTO works and multi-state compliance increases the cost of offering that perk in the first place.

I think it’s at least in part because it’s owed as cash (in some US states) when an employee is fired/quits.