Oregon’s paid leave program had paid out $21.3 million to 13,000 applicants by the first week of October.

Oregon Employment Department officials report that a total of 22,972 applications have been filed since the program began to accept them in mid-August. But Karen Humelbaugh, director of the paid leave program, said others were still being processed — and it is too early to say what the rejection rate is.

“We are allowing some of these to go through an appeals process before we know if it is truly a denial,” she told reporters during an online briefing on Wednesday.

Officials have said previously there are two main causes of rejections. One is insufficient documentation by applicants for the type of benefits requested — personal leave, family leave or safety leave. The department provides a checklist on its page: paidleave.oregon.gov.

The other is insufficient or unclear earnings required for someone to qualify for leave benefits. An applicant must have earned at least $1,000 in wages during each of four of five quarters immediately preceding the application. Wages can come from any employment, not limited to a single job.

Wages also determine how much is paid in benefits. Lower-wage workers will get more proportionately than higher-wage earners. The maximum is 12 weeks, though the periods are longer if someone draws from more than one broad category, or there are complications from pregnancy or childbirth.

Of the benefits paid out so far, officials said 54% are for parental bonding with new children through birth, adoption or foster care; 11% for other family leave; 24% for personal medical leave, and 1.4% for safety leave, based on stalking, domestic or sexual violence. They said the shares were in line with their forecasts.

Oregon is one of eight states and the District of Columbia with paid leave programs. Five more states are scheduled to follow suit by 2026.

Applicants also go through an identification process by the agency to determine whether they are who they say they are — and whether they were employed by the businesses they list. Employees contribute 60%, and employers 40%, to a trust fund earmarked for benefits; the current cap is 1% of employee wages.

Employer names must be the same as listed on W-2 forms that employees receive at the start of a calendar year for purposes of tax filing. The Employment Department maintains a database of employers, who also are subject to payroll taxes levied for the unemployment benefits trust fund. Employees do not contribute to this fund.

“Like any benefits program, we experience fraud attempts,” Humelbaugh said. “We must do our due diligence to protect people’s identities and information and we take our ID verification seriously. We must balance our commitment to work on customer claims and payments efficiently with our need to follow the process that has been put into place to protect people’s identities and information and prevent fraud from the trust fund.”

Except for a loan for program startup expenses that has been repaid, the fund for paid-leave benefits draws no money from the tax-supported general fund in the state’s two-year budget.

Humelbaugh said 60% of program applicants clear ID verification within a couple of days, and 98% within a week.

The program receives about 400 new claims daily and processes about 500.

She said the quickest way for applicants to deal with claims applications is through the accounts they set up via Frances Online, the agency’s new computer system. Alerts indicated by a red exclamation point require the applicant to take some action to supply information. Agency staff also can call up information submitted by a specific applicant; that task is harder on the phone.

The system, however, resets at 11:59 p.m. on Saturdays, so Humelbaugh said information on incomplete claims applications will be discarded automatically.

Applicants also can use the “contact us” feature on the website — Humelbaugh said inquiries are usually answered within two business days — or they can call. The agency has added or shifted staff to respond to calls, 90% of which are answered within 15 minutes.

“We know there are going to be bumps along the way,” she said.