(The Center Square) – Washington workers will see a larger chunk taken out of their paychecks in 2025 to fund the Paid Family and Medical Leave program.
PFML provides paid time off when you have a serious health condition or you’re caring for a family member who is ill, when you’ve given birth, or for bonding with a new child in your home.
In 2024, PFML taxes took 0.74% of an employee’s gross wages, and in 2025 the premium is going up to 0.92%.
Someone who makes $75,000 a year will pay $690 into the program for 2025 whether they ever use it or not.
More than 301,600 people applied for family or medical leave in 2024.
Allison Eldridge, deputy director of leave and care at the Washington Employment Security Department, told lawmakers in the House Labor and Workplace Standards Committee this week that more and more Washington workers are taking advantage of paid leave.
“There’s been a continued increase in applications year over year. In the most recent fiscal year, we had about 204,000 people receive about $1.67 billion in benefits which counts for 61 million leave hours,” said Eldridge.
By fiscal year 2027, Eldridge said they project some 377,000 people will apply for PFML benefits.
There’s been a 79% increase from 2020-2024 in people using PFML.
Employment Security recently announced the agency would be asking Gov. Jay Inslee to include funding in his budget to hire more employees to help answer phones, process applications and to help employers who have questions about their obligations with PFML.
At this week’s work session, House Labor and Workplace Standards Committee Chair Rep. Liz Berry, D-Ballard, said she would be introducing a bill for the 2025 legislative session to include funding for ESD to better track employers to ensure that employees who take advantage of PFML have job security when they return to work.
The total funding request from Employment Security is expected to be released next week, following Inslee unveiling his budget.
In the same work session, lawmakers got an update from the Director of Washington Unemployment Insurance Customer Support, JR Richards.
The department has been under pressure to improve customer service with some people complaining it takes dozens of phone calls and several weeks to even get their application questions answered after losing their job.
“The goal is to answer 80% of the calls that come in within 20 minutes, but during peak season for UI, they are only meeting that goal 41% of the time,” said Richards. “To close that gap, we would have needed an additional 140 FTE’s (full time employees) to reach that goal.”
Like the PFML program, staff who handle unemployment claims for ESD say they need more employees to handle calls, online inquiries and applications.
“Claimants are very worried that they are going to get something wrong, so they’re opting to just call us instead, because they’re afraid of never getting paid,” said Richards who told lawmakers a popular Reddit site has urged people to call UI for help with claims, rather than attempt to fill out an application online themselves.
“We’re actually engaging with the gentleman that runs that site to say how do we partner so that people get the right information so they can navigate better and they don’t just go straight to an escalation path that bogs down the system and slows everything down,” she said.
As recently reported by The Center Square, ESD was blasted in a recent audit for paying out double benefits to some people who applied for paid family leave at the same time they were receiving unemployment benefits.
“So ESD is paying two different benefit claims for the same week, which is not allowed by state law,” said Jim Brownell, assistant director of State Audit and Special Investigations at the State Auditor’s Office.
ESD has said it needs more money to ensure they stay on top of that.
