Michael Zheng opened Ocean Jade Kitchen in Old Orchard Beach last June and while he’s planning to start off with the same amount of seasonal workers as he had last summer, he noted that staffing might be cut if the Canadians tourists don’t show up. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

Kristin Okerholm is used to recruiting workers, both in a thriving summer job market and a faltering one.

But she’s not quite sure how to plan for the uncertainty surrounding President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the fact that Canadians, usually a boom to tourism, have threatened to boycott Vacationland this summer.

“The world’s a little different,” said Okerholm, 49, of Yarmouth, who has worked as a recruiting coordinator for L.L.Bean since 2007. “So, we’re all wondering what’s going to happen next. We’re preparing for every situation that can come.”

The same uncertainty Okerholm feels is rippling across the region, from high school kids seeking a summer paycheck to business owners trying to balance their needs for the next 15 weeks. On paper, the job market seems to be holding steady, with Maine’s unemployment rate at 3.5%, just slightly higher than 3.3% heading into last summer.

But local teenagers say they’re struggling to land jobs. Some wonder if business owners, bracing for the worst, are holding off on commitments. The next two weeks should make the situation come into greater focus, experts say.

“There’s a concern that Canadian visitor traffic will be down. That’s already showing up in places,” said Becky Jacobson, executive director of Hospitality Maine, an Augusta-based agency that represents the hospitality industry. “The concern is how much impact the lack of Canadian visitors may or may not have, and how many actually will change their plans and not come.”

That, in turn, could affect seasonal hiring, although Jacobson doesn’t expect the job market to take a significant hit.

“If there really is a little bit of a decrease in the Canadian visitors, it may just mean that nobody’s working extra shifts,” she said, cautioning that locales such as Old Orchard Beach and Wells will be the ones to watch. “It just might be that they’re actually comfortably staffed.”

Fred Kennedy, owner of the Alouette Beach Resort in Old Orchard Beach. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

Fred Kennedy, owner of Alouette Beach Resort in Old Orchard Beach, is among those watching closely.

“If you’re a small business owner, you worry about everything,” said Kennedy, 70. “I worry about every season at this point as to what’s going to happen. Because you never know.”

Kennedy said he’s actually seen an uptick in available workers this season, which has allowed him to post positions he’s been unable to fill since before the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, he hasn’t noticed a drop-off in reservations, though several of his customers have expressed a distaste with American politics.

“I have had some Canadians write back when we’ve contacted them by email that they were angry at what the president had said,” said Kennedy, who with his wife are the first American owners of a resort that was founded and run by French Canadians.

Down the street at Ocean Jade Kitchen, owner Michael Zheng is planning to hire four seasonal employees – the same number that carried his Chinese restaurant through last year’s busiest stretch. But with Canadian tourists accounting for roughly a quarter of his summer business, Zheng said a drop in visitors could force him to scale back.

“Maybe we’ll have to decrease the amount of staff we’re going to have if it’s not as busy as what we experienced last year,” said Zheng, 39, who opened the restaurant last June.

Even without formal staffing cuts, the hesitation among employers is being felt by those on the other side of the hiring equation. Some of Maine’s younger job seekers say it feels like the jobs just aren’t there, and that their applications are being dismissed for reasons that have nothing to do with their qualifications.

“Even if they say they’re hiring and even if you apply and meet the requirements, they just don’t call,” said Emiling Quesada, 17, who moved to Portland from North Carolina last October. “If you go to interviews, they don’t call back.”

Portland, ranked the fourth-best city in the country for summer jobs in a 2024 study from WalletHub, is one of many areas that relies heavily on seasonal tourism to carry businesses through the year. Still, Quesada and others who spend hours submitting job applications online, visiting businesses in person, and sitting through job interviews, are finding the landscape challenging.

Skyler Draper, also from Portland, has sent in five applications and received no responses.

“I’ve been trying to get a job for quite a while,” said Draper, 16, a student at Casco Bay High School. “It doesn’t really seem like a lot of people are visiting here as much, so maybe that’s impacting the jobs?”

Tensions with Canada have escalated after President Donald Trump renewed threats of stiff tariffs and suggested annexation of Canadian land, jeopardizing a cross-border partnership that grounds Maine’s trade industry and fuels the state’s tourism economy. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the rhetoric in a victory speech Tuesday night, calling it a “shock of the American betrayal.”

Gov. Janet Mills also warned in April that Maine could see 225,000 fewer Canadian visitors this year. And in March, the number of Canadians who returned to the U.S. by car was down almost 32% compared to the year before, marking the third straight month of year-over-year declines, according to Statistics Canada.

Quincy Hentzel, chief executive officer of the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

“There’s such economic uncertainty right now. That must be causing some potential travelers to delay making vacation plans,” said Quincy Hentzel, chief executive officer of the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce. “With the talk of Canadians and also Europeans opting not to travel to the United States, coupled with the fact that people in general have growing concerns over the state of the economy, it’s really difficult to say right now what the overall impact will be during our peak tourism season.”

It’s Hentzel’s job to watch the numbers and help her constituents get ready for what’s ahead.

“A sudden drop in tourist numbers could result in job losses, decline in revenues, and ultimately could lead to business closures,” she said. “If the summer is slower than what’s anticipated, that can have really damaging downstream effects.”

For many business owners, the first test will come on Victoria Day weekend in late May, a Canadian holiday that typically delivers the season’s first tourism surge.

“We will know right then and there how our season is going to go,” said 56-year-old Chris Varano, general manager of Billy’s Chowder House, a seafood spot in Wells that hires more than a dozen summer workers.

Tony Cameron, chief executive officer of Hallowell-based Maine Tourism Association, echoed Hentzel’s concerns about the ripple effects of a slow season, but he still has a sunny outlook for the weeks ahead.

“There’s just a lot of different things that can play a role,” he said. “Bottom line is we’re still going to have a tourism season here in Maine. People are still going to come to Maine.”