BIDDEFORD — If you’ve taken a drive around the Shops at Biddeford Crossing lately, you’ll notice a hefty number of the stores are looking for workers.

Target, Staples, PetSmart, Michaels Arts and Crafts, Sun Tan City, Panera Bread and Casa Fiesta all have “now hiring” signs on their windows.

And while those looking for jobs may find themselves jumping for joy, the need for workers is plaguing employers throughout the community.

“There’s a shortage throughout our entire district,” said PetSmart store leader Theresa Martin. “There’s a shortage of bodies. ”

Martin said the Biddeford location of the retail chain, which offers grooming services and sells pets and pet supplies, employs about 30 people. She would like to add eight to 12 more workers to keep up with store demand.

“There’s been a lot of struggles here,” she said. “There’s a shortage in the workplace right now.”

Craig Pendleton, executive director of the Biddeford + Saco Chamber of Commerce + Industry, said Thursday that there’s “very much” a shortage of workers, and it’s the result of a changing economy.

Starting in 2008, Pendleton said, employers began to centralize their decision-making processes, and workers were in less demand.

Now it’s the opposite.

“I think there’s a lot of new businesses, businesses expanded – the economy is better, and we’ve had the pendulum swing the other way,” Pendleton said.

He said he’s surprised by how high the demand for employees is. At the 12th annual Business Expo hosted by the Chamber a couple weeks ago, Pendleton said 68 companies showed up looking for workers, and 110 potential workers came looking for jobs.

“It’s kind of a good thing, in a way,” Pendleton said. “It shows our companies are doing good and they’re looking to expand, and that’s really positive.”

The struggle to find workers in Biddeford echoes a larger statewide trend, said Julie Rabinowitz, director of policy, operations and communications for the Maine Department of Labor.

“The economy in the private sector has essentially reached the peak level of employment that we were at before the recession,” Rabinowitz said. “We haven’t come out and said we’re officially past the peak, but we have been right at the peak in the past three months.”

Rabinowitz said there are a lot more year-round jobs available, and many people who would otherwise be fulfilling seasonal or parttime roles in their places of employment might be pulled to fill those year-round roles as a result.

Rabinowitz also attributes the shortage of employees to an aging workforce.

“As the oldest state in the nation, we have a lot of baby boomers who are entering retiring age, and we’re seeing about 7,000 retire form the workforce each year. … We don’t have enough young people on a 1-to-1 ratio to the number of baby boomers who are retiring,” Rabinowitz said.

The problem isn’t unemployment, which Rabinowitz said is at a 31-year low. Rather, it’s filling the necessary positions.

To draw people to the workplace, Rabinowitz said employers need to think outside the box to be accommodating, such as offering increased benefits and competitive wages. She also said the state needs to attract more people to live and work in Maine.

The DOL and Maine Career Centers are hosting their 2016 Hire-a-Vet campaign, in which 100 Maine employers are seeking to hire 100 veterans in 100 days. The campaign began on Labor Day, Rabinowitz said, and aims to bring out-of-state veterans and their families to Maine.

During last year’s campaign, 135 employers hired a reported 259 veterans, according to the Maine Career Center.

Rabinowitz also said a number of programs are being discussed involving student debt, including proposals to forgive the debt for out-of-state college graduates if they decide to live and work in Maine.

Pendleton agreed that the state needs to do a better job of attracting out-of-state workers if the economy is going to continue to grow.

“We need to do a better job of attracting people to our state, and I think a lot of it has to do with messaging,” Pendleton said. “I know I’m extremely frustrated with the statistics that show Maine’s older, Maine’s whiter, Maine kids are leaving. If that’s the message that’s coming out of your mouth every single day, that’s what’s going to happen.

“It’s great to know that’s where we are, but we have to send the message that Maine’s great. We need to capitalize on that. We need to stop downgrading ourselves. We need a workforce.”

In addition to promoting the state as a place to live and work, Pendleton said more needs to be done at the educational level – both in universities and technical schools. The Chamber recently formed a Workforce Development Committee to address those needs, he said.

“Our goal with this Workforce Development Committee isn’t going to fix anything immediately, but we’re looking to get business and the educational system back in touch with each other,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that don’t want or don’t need to go to college, because their trade can be taught in the shop.”

Pendleton said his goal is to get the committee involved with middle school-aged children to show them what opportunities for work there are upon graduating high school.

He also wants to expose parents to the diversity of work and business in the Biddeford-Saco area to encourage them to be open-minded about their children being involved in trade work.

Rabinowitz said programs to fill the workplace are continually expanding. The DOL is working with employers to implement “up-skill and backfill” strategies – programs motivated at improving the skill sets of incumbent workers and hiring entry-level workers to assume the vacant positions.

“There’s a lot of options on the table. It’s really trying to leverage all of them, and not every program targets the same group,” Rabinowitz said. “It’s really having the tools in the toolbox to get the job done.”

— Staff Writer Alan Bennett can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or [email protected].