Kohl’s Department Stores plans to hire about 300 employees in San Antonio ahead of the holiday shopping season as national retailers and startups add jobs in and around the Alamo City.

Kohl’s will hold a job fair for a mixture of full-time permanent and seasonal customer service support positions for Kohls.com and Kohl’s credit card services at 9 a.m. Thursday at the Courtyard San Antonio SeaWorld hotel at 11605 Texas 151, the company said Monday. Candidates may also apply at KohlsCareers.com.

“We are looking for friendly, energetic individuals who share in Kohl’s commitment to providing great customer service,” spokeswoman Lyra O’Brien said in an email.

The Wisconsin-based retailer — which has 85 locations in Texas, four in San Antonio — currently employs 950 people at the 210,000-square-foot customer service operations center at 10000 Rogers Run Blvd. on the city’s far West Side, O’Brien said.

Kohl’s opened the call center in 2010 after the city, county and state lured the company with incentives totaling more than $1.2 million — including $750,000 from the Texas Enterprise Fund, a 60 percent real estate tax abatement for six years from Bexar County valued at $213,255 and a six-year, 50 percent tax abatement on property improvements from the city valued at $259,000.

Kohl’s operates another customer service operations center in Dallas, a distribution center in Corsicana in North Texas and an e-commerce fulfillment center in DeSoto, about 16 miles south of Dallas.

The retailer’s announcement comes amongst sputtering job growth in the United States. U.S. employers added 287,000 workers in June after a dismal gain of 11,000 in May, according to the Labor Department. Texas added only 200 nonfarm jobs in May, the Texas Workforce Commission said in June, keeping the state’s unemployment rate flat at 4.4 percent.

But almost 28 percent of executives in Texas’ service sector — which includes businesses that produce intangible goods, like healthcare, legal advice, transportation and financial services — told the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas in June they plan to hire new employees within the next six months, according to results from the Dallas Fed’s monthly service sector outlook survey.

Amazon announced in May plans to hire more than 1,000 full-time, permanent employees for its $150 million, 1.25 million-square-foot order fulfillment center in San Marcos, slated to open this summer. And, in June, Dollar General Corp. opened its 1 million-square-foot, $100 million distribution center at 6601 Cal Turner Drive in East Bexar County —which the company said would employ more than 530 people with an estimated annual payroll of $19.2 million.

Amazon and Dollar General each funded their centers with government incentive packages. San Marcos City Council members approved a package in July 2015 refunding 85 percent of Amazon’s personal property taxes, 40 percent of its real property taxes for the next 10 years with a possible five-year extension and partial refunds of its sales taxes for two decades. Under the agreement, Amazon must hire more than 350 employees in San Marcos by January 2018.

Bexar County commissioners unanimously approved an agreement in December 2014 giving the Dollar General center a 10-year, 75 percent abatement on qualified real and personal property taxes.

Other companies who recently posted hiring notices in San Antonio include Bellhops, a Tennessee-based moving company that plans to hire 150 college students here, and Alorica, a California-based customer services management company that is adding 400 people to its 2,200-person San Antonio staff.

jfechter@express-news.net

Twitter: @JFreports