Restaurants, hotels and ski shops in Park City hope you do. With a tight labor market across the state, the availability of workers could be this ski season's biggest challenge for Utah's premiere destination.

The Canyons, Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley say they are well enough staffed to rock and roll whenever Mother Nature is ready. Still, the local newspaper, The Park Record, is jammed with want ads. Apply today, they urge, for a job as a bus driver, receptionist, maid, cook, concierge, accountant, chairlift worker, cashier, child-care attendant, heavy-equipment operator and many others.

The paper recently editorialized that the big gambit this ski season - aside from snow conditions - will be finding enough workers for all the positions needed to make Park City hum like the well-oiled machine its patrons have come to expect.

"Local employers are already beginning to chew their fingernails over the dwindling number of applications for a growing number of seasonal jobs," the paper noted.

There are a lot of openings, concurred Tom Anderson, a Utah Department of Workforce Services business consultant for Summit and Wasatch counties.

"We have at least 200 job openings [in Park City]," he said. "Employers have been complaining about a lack of applicants."

Most of the job opportunities are in the service industry, restaurants, ski resorts and retail shops, he said.

There was a time when many of those positions would have been filled with college grads taking a winter off before launching into a career-path job.

As the college ski-bum population dwindled in the late 1980s, resorts were rescued by a wave of immigrant labor. But this year, the job market has apparently expanded beyond the immigrant community's capacity to provide workers.

Among those who have welcomed immigrants with open arms is Park City Mayor Dana Williams. But now, even the municipality is having trouble hiring bus drivers and other positions that are among the best for seasonal employment.

"We're having a really hard time," he said. "I haven't heard a full-on community outcry, but I've heard rumblings from people who can't find enough employees."

One factor in the shortage of applicants is that almost everybody in Summit County already has a job, according to Department of Workforce Services statistics. About 20,916 residents have jobs. Only 484 potential employees say they are without work.

That's an unemployment rate of 2.3 percent.

"Generally, the labor market across the state is pretty tight," said Jim Robson, labor-market analyst for Workforce Services. "Summit County has a full-employment rate. The ski industry has to attract people from outside."

Making matters more complicated for the resort and service industries, Robson noted, is that the construction business is very strong in Utah and pulls workers away from lower-paying jobs.

"The workers are going to go where they can get the best wage," he said.

The Canyons resort, along with Deer Valley and Park City Mountain Resort, each hire hundreds of employees every winter.

That's always a challenge, said Libby Dowd, director of public relations at The Canyons.

Resorts use a number of strategies to fill those positions, including hiring college students from South America who are on summer break during ski season in the Northern Hemisphere.

"We're ramping up, and we have enough employees, but we're always looking for more," Dowd said.

This ski season, The Canyons also has hired workers from New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and Jamaica, Dowd added. They are looking for an adventure as much as a job, she said.

"They want an American experience and, heck, they get to ski."

Everybody will be open for business, said Bill Malone, executive director of the Park City Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau.

"Just because all the jobs aren't filled doesn't mean things quit rolling," he said.

Park City is on track for another successful season.

"They'll just work more hours and make up for shortages," Malone said.

csmart@sltrib.com