Arizona: unused vacation when employment ends

Arizona mandates earned paid sick time with a statutory accrual rate, and the same article says nothing in it requires reimbursement for unused accrued sick time at separation.

Each answer traces to the lines quoted below.

What the source says

• Employees accrue a minimum of one hour of earned paid sick time for every 30 hours worked.
• An employee of an employer with 15 or more employees is not entitled to accrue or use more than 40 hours of earned paid sick time per year, unless the employer selects a higher limit.
• An employee of an employer with fewer than 15 employees is not entitled to accrue or use more than 24 hours per year, again unless the employer picks a higher limit.
• Earned paid sick time is carried over to the following year, subject to those same usage limits.
• An employer may instead front-load — providing at the beginning of the year all the earned paid sick time the employee is expected to accrue in that year.
• Nothing in the article requires financial or other reimbursement to an employee upon termination, resignation, retirement or other separation for accrued earned paid sick time that has not been used.
• So Arizona is the mirror image of a payout state: the accrual is mandatory and the payout is not. The mandate here covers sick time rather than vacation.

Sources

What 80 hours a year looks like on a biweekly schedule

The bar below is not specific to Arizona law — it shows the mechanic every schedule shares. Eighty hours a year across 26 paychecks is 3.08 hours a period. With a 40-hour ceiling the balance stops growing partway through the year, which is what a ceiling does: it halts accrual rather than deleting hours already earned.

Closing balance after a year: 40 hours — and 40.08 hours never accrued because the ceiling was reached.

Does Arizona require my employer to pay out unused vacation?

Arizona mandates earned paid sick time with a statutory accrual rate, and the same article says nothing in it requires reimbursement for unused accrued sick time at separation.

Can a policy in Arizona erase vacation I already earned?

On use-it-or-lose-it, the source read for this page puts Arizona at: Allowed. The quoted lines on this page are the basis for that, and anything the source did not settle is listed as not established.

Where did these lines come from?

From Arizona Revised Statutes § 23-372 — Accrual of earned paid sick time. Each one was opened and read rather than summarised from another site, and the links are on this page.

Is this legal advice?

No. This page quotes public sources so you can read them yourself. It is not legal advice and it does not replace your employer’s written policy or a lawyer in your jurisdiction.