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Maine Labor Officials to Employers: Innovate to Deal with Worker Shortage

Maine businesses have long struggled to find enough seasonal workers to meet the summertime demands of the tourist industry, but state labor officials say this year could be particularly difficult.

Extended school calendars, fewer students and new limits on the number of available foreign workers are all putting pressure on the summer labor pool and prompting some employers to look at other potential sources.

From the small B&Bs in Ogunquit to the luxury hotels in Bar Harbor, Maine inns, restaurants and snack bars are competing for their share of a commodity that is becoming increasingly scarce: State labor officials say Maine’s job market is tight, with an unemployment rate under 3.5 percent.

Many businesses are being pressed to pay workers above the minimum wage. But Gretchen Wilson, the executive director of the Ellsworth Area Chamber of Commerce, says the first challenge is to find those workers.

“I think this season is going to be a little tougher than others … it looks that way,” she says.

In Ellsworth, Boothbay and other tourist destinations, seasonal employers are confronting a labor pool that could actually be smaller than last year due to a couple of new developments. Julie Rabinowitz, director of policy, operations and communication for the Maine Department of Labor, says that in addition to the smaller numbers of Mainers out there looking for work, the process of hiring foreign workers has become more cumbersome and expensive.

“That is something that U.S. DOL had kind of a slowdown in and there’s also been some associated fees that have gone up with that program for employers to participate in, so that’s been a source of labor for employers on the coast and that has been a little more difficult this year for some employers to participate in,” she says.

With fewer Mainers looking for work and fewer foreign workers available, Rabinowitz says the state is advising employers to consider ways of attracting retirees back into the workforce, if only on a temporary basis.

“The shift now is to look at how you retain an older worker, whether you have a flexible schedule, what’s going to adapt to the things that a retiree might prefer versus what a high school student might prefer, and so we are certainly encouraging employers to broaden whom they would normally consider their target labor market,” she says.

“There’s so many restaurants now in this area, or every area, that need the cooks, the grill people and the fry people which is high demand, high demand,” says Carol Jordan, who with her late husband Jim operated Jordan’s Snack Bar before transferring the business to her son.

She now serves as a consultant as the Route 1 icon celebrates its 35th year of dishing out baskets of fried clams, lobster rolls and sundaes. Jordan says she has never had too much trouble attracting good counter help to wait on the customers, but finding reliable cooks can be more challenging.

“At the present time, we are closed on Tuesdays actually because we’ve got a long season to go and the ones that are in the kitchen right now are working very hard and they certainly need a day off — which we all do, you know, so you have to do what you have to do,” Jordan says. Ordinarily, the business would be open throughout the week.

Tourism businesses are also being encouraged by chamber and labor officials to explore options for providing transportation from more rural areas of the state to centers of tourism activity in an effort to fill the demand for labor.