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S P R I N G 2 0 2 2 / W O R K F O R M E 9 Hammond Lumber Company is Maine's largest independent lumber and building material retailer—with 21 locations around the state and over 800 employees. Skip Hammond started the company in 1953 with two employees and a commitment to "saw straight, talk straight, and do more for his customer than the guy down the road." If you share that mindset, we have positions in sales, logistics, drafting & design, accounting, information technology, human resources, management, and more. We'll provide the training you need, and we offer great job perks, including: • Training and Career Development Opportunities • Health, Dental, Short-term-disability, and Life Insurance • 401(k) Plan & Company Match • Flexible Spending Accounts • Paid Time Off, Paid Holidays • Employee Assistance Program • Employee Referral Program • Employee Discount on Building Materials Build a career in Maine: HammondLumber.com/careers Build Your Career With Us 21 Locations Across Maine Auburn • Bangor • Bar Harbor • Belfast • Belgrade • Blue Hill Boothbay Harbor • Brunswick • Bucksport Calais • Camden Cherryfield • Damariscotta • Ellsworth • Fairfield • Farmington Greenville • Machias • Portland • Rockland • Skowhegan HammondLumber.com "These apprenticeships are part of a larger effort by the [Gov. Janet] Mills ad- ministration to address the longstanding workforce shortage issue in Maine," she added in an emailed statement. There were 33,200 total construction sector jobs in Maine in January, according to Picard. She estimated there were about 1,650 unfilled construction job vacancies across the state that month, basing her "ballpark figure" off of the national, sector- specific seasonally adjusted job opening rate of 4.8% in that month. Even though the agency doesn't track workforce-wide job retention, both Dan Wildes and Herb Sargent, the chief ex- ecutives of Sheridan and Sargent Corp., respectively, agreed in interviews that worker retention is an issue. "Apprentices in Maine who completed their program in the last two years, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, increased their wages, on average, by nearly 40%, and 94% of apprentices continue their employ- ment with their apprenticeship-sponsoring business," noted an agency news release in January. Getting and keeping those workers will be critical not just for the success of individual companies, but to make sure any number of initiatives or projects across Maine come to fruition and use local workers, Hapworth says . "It hasn't happened yet, but if [construc- tion companies] don't get ahead of this curve, out-of-state companies are going to start coming to Maine and doing these jobs that Maine construction businesses should do," he says. Recruiting and retention concerns Over at Sargent Corp., a construction ser- vices company whose local offices are in Old Town, management has also tried tackling the recruitment and retention concern with further education, albeit not a registered apprenticeship program like Sheridan. Students typically come to Sargent several days a week for roughly a month and a half for a series of training lessons (management reconfigured the program for the first two years of the pandemic; the company antici- pates it will resume with a slightly different format in 2023). Practical, hands-on lessons might span from pouring a concrete slab to handling a specific type of saw or pump. But to Herb Sargent, the company's presi- dent and CEO, the point isn't necessarily just to create more productive, trained future construction workers. He wants to lay the C O N T I N U E D O N F O L LO W I N G PAG E » There's nobody knocking on the door trying to get a job in construction. It's actually quite difficult to recruit right now. — Dylan Hapworth Sheridan Construction