of paid leave in a twelve-month period. PFL covers employees who take time off to bond with their own child or their registered domestic partner's child, or a child placed for adoption or foster-care with them or their domestic partner. Eligibility expires one year from the minor child's date of birth, adoption, or foster care placement. PFL also covers employees who take time off to care for a seriously ill child, parent, spouse or domestic partner. Exclusions An employee may not receive PFL insurance benefits if he or she is also eligible for or already receiving State Disability Insurance, Unemployment Compensation Insurance, or Workers' Compensation. An employer may require employees to take up to two weeks earned, but unused, vacation prior to the employee’s initial receipt of PFL benefits. Job security The PFL does not offer job security stipulations. Instead, it relies on the limited job security already provided by federal and state laws: an employer is only required to grant time off and to hold a job for an employee if the employer is covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) or the California Family Rights Act (CFRA). The California Family Rights Act offers twelve weeks of unpaid leave for employees of firms with more than 20 workers. Benefit rates The California Employment Development Department offers a tool to help calculate benefit payment amounts. Benefits are set at 70% of income for low income earners and 60% for middle and high income earners, however there is a maximum weekly benefit that is tied to the State Average Weekly Wage corresponding to the year of the claim. For 2019, this maximum is $1252 while the lower range of weekly benefits is $50. To qualify for the minimum weekly amount ($50), an individual must have at least $300 of wages (or $75 per quarter) in the base period, which covers 12 months and is divided into four quarters of three months each. Awareness and usage patterns In the first year of the program's passage, only 138,000 people applied for benefits. This was less than half of California's estimate for number of benefit recipients, 300,000. Of those claims, 88% were for bonding with a new child while 12% were for caring for an ill family member. Females dominated the claims, making up 83% of new child claims and 70% of care claims. Although the low number of claims could have