Miller Hill Mall to host spring job fair, business showcase Thursday

Miller Hill Mall is turning Center Court into a hiring floor on Thursday, May 7, as Old Navy and other local employers look to fill retail and service jobs before summer traffic ramps up.

The Hermantown Area Chamber of Commerce and Miller Hill Mall will host the Spring Job Fair and Business Showcase from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with employers set up in Center Court and inside participating storefronts. The chamber says employer registration is open, and it is promoting the event as a way to connect with talent, increase visibility and support workforce development.

The mall gives the event unusual reach. Miller Hill Mall describes itself as the shopping destination of the Northland, with more than 100 stores and customers coming from the Duluth area, the Iron Range, Wisconsin, Michigan and Canada. For job seekers, that means one trip can put them in front of a mix of mall retailers and other businesses instead of sending them from one storefront to another.

One current example is Old Navy, which posted a seasonal retail sales associate opening at Miller Hill in April. That kind of hiring points to the immediate need businesses have as warmer weather brings more shoppers, more visitors and more pressure on already-thin retail staffs. Even entry-level positions matter in that setting, because they keep registers open, fitting rooms staffed and customer service lines moving when traffic picks up.

The chamber has used the mall before for hiring events. Its 2025 Miller Hill Mall job fair ran on May 22, 2025, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., and the 2024 Hermantown Chamber job fair and business showcase drew about 30 groups at the Aspirus St. Luke’s Sports and Event Center in Proctor. This year’s return to Miller Hill suggests the chamber sees the mall as a reliable place to bring employers and workers together in one of St. Louis County’s busiest commercial corridors.

That makes the job fair more than a routine recruiting event. It is a snapshot of local labor demand at a time when retailers, seasonal employers and service businesses are preparing for the summer stretch. If employers are still assembling crews now, it suggests both continued business activity around Miller Hill and a steady need to keep stores and service counters fully staffed.