Up go the holiday store fronts, with twinkling lights and jingling music, and normally, the "Now Hiring"signs, too.
But these past few years, hiring has been a little different.
The signs are there, the stores need workers, but holiday hiring in the area has a less-than-merry ring to it.
In 2005, nearly 625,000 people were hired nationally to work through the holiday season, according to data from the North Dakota Retailers Association.
That's a 20 percent increase over 2004, said Mike Rud, president of the association.
In preparations for a strong holiday season, Rud said he expects those numbers to once again increase this year.
But in the Bismarck-Mandan area, low unemployment and worker shortages have left larger retailers shying away from hiring holiday help, said Dan Schumacher, business services supervisor for Job Service North Dakota's Bismarck customer service office.
"Over the past five years, it's been a steady decline"in holiday hiring, Schumacher said. "We see maybe less than 25 percent of the hiring that took place five years ago that's identified as seasonal hires."
Schumacher said the state and city's low unemployment numbers have definitely influenced the ratio of full-time to part-time workers, making it harder for employers to fill those part-time hours.
"I think, that of course, due to the shortage, that encourages more full-time positions,"Schumacher said.
Indeed, seasonal hires, or temporary workers who generally work a 90-day period through the end of the year, are not high on the hiring priority lists for several area retailers.
"We don't hire temporary or seasonal employees,"said Denise Curfman, human resources manager with the Bismarck Home Depot. "We require all of our associates part-time and full-time to have the same training knowledge, and training hours."
Which sometimes means up to six months of training, something a seasonal employee wouldn't get.
Schumacher said the training concern tends to be the biggest when it comes to hiring temporary employees, as the stores are trending toward increasing the quality of customer service and employee knowledge.
And it's much easier, Schumacher said, to give a current, trained employee, more hours as holiday shopping demands increase.
"Employers are absorbing those additional hours by giving those additional hours to already part-time employees,"Schumacher said. "It saves them recruitment time and training time."
That's what Curfman is doing. Over the holidays, employees looking for more hours get more hours, she said.
"All my part-timers want full-time hours,"she said.
Other stores, such as the Bismarck Menards, have never hired seasonal help.
"We just keep hiring until we feel that we're staffed appropriately,"said Scott Robideau, assistant store manager."We always fluctuate between 160 and 180 people."
Working hours can be increased during the holidays according to workers' needs, he said, but the store never has taken on seasonal employees.
A few stores are still looking for holiday help, though, Schumacher said. Some of the stores in downtown Bismarck continue to struggle to find employees for what reports say is going to be a heavy holiday season.
But what once was nearly 30 stores posting positions for seasonal help is now only about half a dozen, Schumacher said.
Seasonal hospitality work also has waned, Schumacher noted. All of the positions posted at Job Service are for retail, he said.
"That's one of the surprising things; it used to be the hotels that have banquet facilities would hire a lot of holiday people," Schumacher said.
He also noted that perhaps because of the retail growth in the city, traffic during the year may be more consistent. And a lot of the newer stores have a fresh group of newly hired and trained employees.
That's the case with the new Target, said store manager Doug Kautzman.
That store has about 310 employees, and isn't looking to hire many more, he said.
Schumacher said Old Navy has already hired about 75 people, and the Johnny Carino's hired about 80.
"We've had a lot of new retail opening up. It's new and exciting for employers and employees,"Schumacher said.
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