Figure skates gliding on ice. C. Thacher Carter / The Times Record

The ice rink at Coffin Pond in Brunswick will not be opening this season due to a shortage of workers in the parks and recreation department.

According to Tom Farrell, Brunswick’s director of parks and recreation, the department is looking to hire four full-time maintenance workers. That’s in addition to two seasonal winter positions, only one of which is filled.

A full staff in the department would consist of 14 total full-time positions, seven of which would be maintenance workers. Farrell, who has been with Brunswick parks and recreation for 40 years, said that finding employees has been an unprecedented challenge for the department this year.

“Unfortunately, due to our current staffing situation we’ve had to reorganize priorities regarding when we will clear the ice rinks and groom the trails,” said Farrell in a statement last week. “Our highest priority areas after each storm event will be clearing approximately ten miles of sidewalks surrounding local school sites as well as the recreation center parking lots and bike path.”

The department has gone to great lengths to try and get the word out about the open positions, Farrell said, although few applications are being submitted. Examples include promotion of the job through social media and news outlets as well as distributing 1,400 announcements about the position as part of a flyer in the Brunswick schools. The pay range for the job $16.89 to $19.50 per hour, and also includes paid time off, insurance options and retirement plans.

The ice rinks at Lishness Park and at the town mall will open as scheduled, according to the statement from the town, so long as weather and staff resources permit it. Brunswick will also maintain over 4.5 miles of trails in the Kate Furbish Preserve trail systems.

Brunswick is not alone in feeling the impacts of the labor shortage sparked by COVID-19. Nationally, in the third quarter of 2021 there were approximately 10.7 million job openings, according to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. During the same quarter in 2019, around 7.1 million openings were reported.

According to Dr. Jason Harkins, the associate dean at the Maine Business School and an associate professor of entrepreneurship, the current shortage is the result of a shock to the labor market, sparked by COVID-19 and the lockdowns, business closures and large amounts of people leaving the work force both permanently and temporarily that followed.

“The number of jobs available as compared to the number of people that were able and willing to work them shifted,” said Harkins.

Now, as businesses seek new hires, the worker-company relationship has tilted to better favor the workers, Harkins said, allowing prospective employees to seek out more rewarding, flexible and better paying job opportunities.

Access to childcare services that can accommodate inconsistent remote learning schedules has also been a barrier to re-entering the workforce, Harkins said, a challenge that particularly impacts service-based workers that can’t clock-in remotely.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Maine’s labor force participation rate for November 2021 was 60.3%. For comparison, in November 2020 the rate was 59.5% and in November 2019, the rate stood at 62.7%.

The parks and recreation department in Bath is made up of 10 full-time positions and up to 20 seasonal positions at various times throughout the year. During the winter, there are usually a several seasonal, on-call employees, but only one this year.

“Summer to fall we were probably running at about 50%,” said Bath Parks, Recreation, Forestry and Cemeteries Director Steve Baboni. “I do have one full time position open as the city arborist that has been open for quite some time, and we just filled a parks and cemetery foreman position that was open.”

As for outdoor winter recreation offerings, Baboni said that the department grooms ski trails at the Bath Country Club and maintains and ice rink at Goddard’s Pond. Both will run as usual this year, although the warming hut at Goddard will not open due to a lack of staffing.

Topsham’s parks and recreation division has not felt the impacts of the labor shortage because of a low turnover rate among a staff of four, according to the department’s director, Pam Leduc. Topsham operates two ice rinks, sledding hills and cross-country ski trails.