With Friday’s official kickoff of the Christmas shopping season looming, several local stores have hired seasonal employees to help with the rush of extra shoppers.

Eskimo Joe’s has set up its annual Christmas shop in Oakwood Mall.

“We have around nine employees already hired,” said Terri Moorman, director of retail operations for E-skimo Joe’s. “Were pretty comparable to last year.”

Eskimo Joe’s already has hired most of the em-ployees it needs for the Christmas season.

“We are fortunate that we have people who work seasonally for us. We have many return employees each year, especially in Enid,” Moorman said.

JCPenney, also located in Oak-wood Mall, also has hired the same number of seasonal employees as last year.

“Yeah, it really hasn’t changed. We’ve pretty much hired what we needed,” said Lisa Danielson, store manager, “We hired about 25 people.”

She said she received about the same number of applications this year as in previous years.

“It’s not like the city. They’ve had a lot more,” Daniel-son said. “Ours hasn’t been a big difference from last year.”

With Black Fri-day, Danielson said she expects sales to pick up.

“It has been a little bit quieter. Lots of people have been asking about Friday, so I think it will be like last year,” Danielson said. “If anything, we have seen people waiting longer to do their shopping to get the best prices. They are still going to do their shopping.”

Since Wal-Mart just finished a remodel requiring extra part-time employees, new seasonal employees are few.

“Since we just finished our remodel, we are hiring only about 10. The holidays hit us at a really good time because we were able to transfer temporary employees in,” said Diane Monforte, personnel manager for Wal-Mart. “We have as many positions as we usually do but about 42 tempers became permanent employees.”

Even with only a few positions available, hundreds of applications are coming in.

“In the first tier are the applicants that do well on the customer service test,” she said. “We have 80 or 90 (applications) for one position. When we open up to the second tier, we see 120 to 130 applications for a seasonal position. The biggest things people need to realize is that we need help during our busiest times, which is evening and weekends. If a person wants a job here they need to be able to work those times.”

Doug Tilyard, store manager for Kmart, said they have hired seasonal employees.

“We’ve hired about 20 additional seasonal employees. We’ve pretty much hired what we need,” he said. “The pool was larger this year as far as people putting in applications. We could be more selective this year because there were more people this year.”

According to Tilyard, sales have been about even with last year so far.

“It is pretty much the same, but the next few days will tell. The period up till now is status quo to last year,” he said. “I’d say we are real close to last year. They are projecting sales like last year so hopefully we do it.”