SELINSGROVE — While a handful of major retailers are hiring locally for the holidays, national trends suggest those with jobs can expect more hours and those without may remain without.

That’s because retailers expect a 1 percent decline in holiday sales over past year, and they’re looking to reduce operating costs, said Rachel Smith, assistant director of the Central Pennsylvania Workforce Development Corp.

It’s cheaper to pay an experienced employee for extra hours than to train a new employee, she said.

That’s how it is at Country Cupboard near Lewisburg. General manager Steve Kulhavy said the complex prefers to “stretch” a bit rather than hire people it would have to lay off in January.

The national sales decline was predicted by Manpower Inc.’s researchers and duplicated at the National Retail Federation, Smith said. The expected decrease, however, is less than the 3.4 percent drop in sales experienced in 2008 compared with 2007.

The holiday employment gain last year was 25 percent less than it averaged the previous five years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Big retailers looking

In the Valley, big retailers looking to hire seasonal workers include Sears, Walmart, Kmart, Best Buy, Kohl’s, Target and Five Below.

Those are the only ones staff at the state’s job assistance center, CareerLink, in Selinsgrove, could think of Thursday, said Jamie Mercaldo, CareerLink’s employer services representative.

This year, managers of stores at the Susquehanna Valley Mall in Hummels Wharf expressed no interest in holding a seasonal job fair as they had in the past, Mercaldo said. Many are only adding a person or two, she said.

Nevertheless, “A lot of places in the mall are looking,” she said.

Those who wish to work at the mall can visit www.susquehannavalleymall.com and click on “jobs” in the yellow band near the top of the page. There, one can find job openings at the smaller retailers. These listings may change on a daily basis.

Mercaldo noted that Five Below, a new store at Monroe Marketplace, advertised on its Web site that it is interested in seeing seasonal applicants between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Wednesdays.

At Monroe Marketplace’s Best Buy, C.J. Cencetti, a manager, said his store is looking for a few product processors to unload and stock, a sales associate, cashiers and customer service personnel. Applications can be submitted at www.bestbuy.com/careers, he said.