OXFORD – L.L. Bean is pumping a payroll of more than a half-million dollars into the Oxford Hills with its temporary call center on Route 26 in Oxford.

The center in the former ICT space is employing about 325 seasonal workers to fill catalog orders during seven weeks before Christmas. At 30 hours a week, and wages of between $9 and $10 an hour, that’s a payroll of $625,000, said Galen Rose, economist with the State Planning Office.

But while the influx of fresh money is certainly a plus for local merchants, he said, “It’s not going to create any long-term secondary effect” on the economy because of the temporary nature of the jobs.

Carolyn Beem, L.L. Bean manager of public affairs, declined comment Monday on whether the company has any plans in the region beyond the Christmas rush.

“I know there are a lot of folks that are eager to have something more permanent in place, but this call center was set up as a seasonal employment opportunity,” Beem said. She said the company’s needs for seasonal workers varies from year to year; this year it needed 300 more seasonal workers, for a total of 1,000 overall.

“Business has been good,” Beem said.

The company recently announced that it was putting on hold plans to build a 50,000-square-foot call center in Oakland, near Waterville, citing concerns about the availability of local labor.

Beem said the Waterville project is “being looked at from a number of angles” and declined to say whether the company’s success in attracting seasonal labor in the Oxford Hills was being factored in.

“At this time we’ve made no determinations” whether or not to continue with a seasonal operation next year in Oxford, Beem said. She did say that the company “couldn’t be more pleased with the response from the community” both in terms of numbers of people who responded to the call for workers, and their qualifications.

Barb Olson, vice president of the Growth Council of Oxford Hills, credits the Maine Career Center in helping to attract workers to fill L.L. Bean’s needs in a relatively short time.

“We’ll jump on the opportunity to make this a full-time operation” for the Oxford Hills, Olson said, but so far, “there’s been no commitment from them.”