Shoppers make their way in and out of L.L.Bean in Freeport in 2022. The retailer announced it will lay off up to 3% of its Maine workforce this spring. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

L.L.Bean is laying off between 50 and 75 employees at its corporate headquarters, or about 2% to 3% of its Maine-based staff, the outdoor clothing and equipment retailer said.

Spokesman Jason Sulham said the Freeport-based company “continues to evaluate the fluctuating retail landscape and adapt our organizational design to enable long-term growth.” He called it a “small, focused workforce reduction” that will be voluntary for some workers.

Affected employees will receive severance packages and outplacement services, Sulham said. The reductions are scheduled for March and will not affect L.L.Bean’s goal of hiring nearly 3,500 seasonal workers for the holidays, which represents about half its peak-season workforce.

It’s the second round of job cuts announced this year. L.L.Bean laid off 46 part-time employees in April to consolidate call center hours to one shift in response to more shoppers placing orders online. At the time, Sulham said “the large majority” of the company’s 500 customer service workers would not be affected by those layoffs.

Retail employment in Maine fell 2.7% in the second half of 2023 and into the start of this year. But it rebounded last spring, to 81,269, up from 80,418 in the first three months of last year, according to the state Department of Labor.

Maine’s retail workforce is seasonal, peaking during the summer and at Christmas and dropping in February. The retail labor force in Maine is about 81,000 consistently. “It’s stayed in that range for quite a while now,” said Curtis Picard, president and CEO of the Retail Association of Maine.

Nationally, the retail trade lost 28,000 jobs in November, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, after little net employment change over the previous 12 months. In November, employment declined by 15,000 jobs among general merchandise retailers, but 4,000 jobs were added by electronics and appliance retailers.

Consumer spending is a closely watched gauge of economic health, accounting for nearly 70% of the U.S. economy. Retail sales rose 0.4% from September to October, according to the most recent statistics, which is a strong increase though less than the previous month’s 0.8% gain.