According to its director, more than 70,000 verified claims have been filed — though not all are found eligible for benefit payments — and Employment Department staffers have responded to more than 220,000 calls and 140,000 email messages and contact-us tickets via Frances Online.

The agency’s new automated system, which replaces a three-decade-old program that relied on even older technology, began Paid Leave Oregon benefits in mid-September.

Under the 2019 law passed by the Oregon Legislature, paid leave comes in three categories: Care for people filing claims, care for family members, and safety leave for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, harassment or stalking. Oregon is among the few states with paid leave to offer benefits in the latter category.

“They only show the sum of the impact that we are having on Oregonians and their families,” Karen Madden Humelbaugh, the program director, told reporters during a video conference call on March 20.

The agency dashboard listed 77,423 claims with verified identities and 50,967 claims approved for payment. The number of approved claimants was 44,099; some people qualify for claims under more than one category. (The normal benefit period is 12 weeks, but the time can be extended slightly when claims are combined.)

Oregon employers and employees began contributions to the paid leave trust fund via payroll deductions starting in January 2023. The current cap for 2024 is 1% of total wages, split between a 60% share from employees and 40% from employers. (Employers with fewer than 25 workers do not contribute, although employees do.)

She said the department staff is working on more precise indicators of how the benefits help people.

“We have had to make sure we are protecting our trust fund from fraud and our customers from those who want to steal their benefits using stolen identities,” she said. “All of this means we had to take time to get it right when it comes to reporting data.”

She said it takes an average of 25 minutes for an employee to complete a request for paid leave via the new automated system. An employer is then notified that an employee has requested paid leave and given 10 calendar days to respond. After the applicant’s identity is verified and the applicant submits documentation, the agency determines whether the person is eligible for benefits. Payments are made via bank transfers.

Humelbaugh said the time from application to bank transfer has been whittled from 39 days before Jan. 1 to 29 days since then.

Though it is within the department’s 30-day target, she said, “We are looking at how to reduce this time frame even more.”

The initial clearance rate (roughly 67%) for paid-leave applications appears similar to the rate for approval of unemployment insurance benefits. But David Gerstenfeld, Employment Department director, said there is a longer track record with unemployment benefits. Gerstenfeld led that division from 2011 until he become the first director of the paid leave program in 2019, shortly after the Legislature approved it. (He was thrust into the director’s job in 2020.)

“With unemployment insurance, we’ve had decades and decades of data so we can see what the average of overall claims is that people are ultimately eligible for benefits,” he said.

“We encourage people who do not know if they are eligible to apply for benefits, because we do not people self-screening themselves out if they might be eligible. We have people who apply all the time who unfortunately are not eligible for benefits.”

Among three preliminary indicators for disqualifying applicants from obtaining paid-leave benefits, Gerstenfeld said:

• An applicant works for an employer that already offers its own paid-leave program and is approved by the state as an equivalent benefit. (There are few such employers, but they exist.)

• An applicant has not worked enough to qualify for benefits. The law specifies that someone must have worked four of the previous five quarters and earned at least $1,000 in each of those four quarters.

• An applicant seeks paid leave for reasons not covered by the law.

“The criteria for paid leave and unemployment insurance are different,” he said.

“We really do not have enough data to know what the longterm percentage of eligibility for paid leave will look like.”