MANCHESTER — The retail hardware giant Lowe's Home Improvement will lay off 279 employees as it closes three stores in New Hampshire.

Colleen Maiura, spokeswoman at the Lowe's corporate office in Mooresville, N.C., said the company will close the Claremont and Hooksett stores in about a month, following efforts to sell off merchandise in those locations. The store in Manchester was closed abruptly Sunday night and its inventory will be shipped to the Bedford Lowe's location, she said.

“It's always hard to close stores, but it's a business decision,” Maiura said Monday. “It was one we had to make.”

According to a press release from Lowe's, the company is closing 20 stores nationwide and laying off about 1,950 employees. New Hampshire was the hardest hit — no other state had more than two stores close.

Most employees were given a severance package that included 60 days of pay and benefits, Julie Yenichek, Lowe's public relations director, said in an emailed statement. Of the 279 employees in New Hampshire, 169 were full-time, according to Maiura.

Three employees of the Manchester store — the manager, human resources manager and loss prevention officer — will remain employed and will be given jobs at other Lowe's stores, Yenichek said.

“Closing stores is never easy, given the impact on hard-working employees and local communities,” Lowe's Chairman, President and CEO Robert A. Niblock said in a statement. “However, we have an obligation to make tough decisions when necessary to improve profitability and strengthen our financial position.”

Maiura said the Claremont, Hooksett and Manchester stores, as well as the other 17 being closed, failed to turn a profit. The stores are relatively new. The Manchester and Hooksett stores opened in October 2008 — today is the third anniversary of the Hooksett store opening, according to information provided by Maiura. The Claremont store opened in May 2010.

“The stores that are closing all are underperforming,” she said. “We did not perceive those stores becoming profitable in the near future.”

The closings are the latest and largest in a series of escalating numbers of closings the company has endured, according to information provided by Maiura. The company closed one location nationwide in 2009, three in 2010 and, before Sunday's closings, had closed seven so far in 2011.

Lowe's, the world's second-largest hardware retail chain, owned the building housing the Claremont store, while it leased the facilities in Manchester and Hooksett, according to Maiura.

The Claremont and Hooksett stores will remain open temporarily to liquidate merchandise, Maiura said.

“In markets where we believe there is an opportunity to sell quickly, we want to take advantage of that,” she said.

Yenichek said the decision to close the Manchester location, which she said the company leased, without providing any notice to employees, many of whom were in shock as they stood outside the store after the meeting Sunday night, was not an easy one.

She said the company handles store closings one of two ways - either by immediately closing and providing severance packages or by keeping stores open and employees working until inventory has been sold off as much as possible.

The Lowe's website calls employees “a strategic investment” and says the company “is fully dedicated to helping our talented and committed employees build rewarding careers.”

Yenichek said Lowe's would “work with local agencies” to help laid-off employees find new employment.

“We will do everything we can for the employees,” she said, adding that “they are eligible to apply for openings at other stores when opportunities arise.”

Besides the stores affected by the closings, Lowe's has 13 stores in New Hampshire, according to its store locator function: Amherst, Bedford, Concord, North Conway, Epping, Gilford, Greenland, Littleton, Nashua, Rochester, Salem, Seabrook and Tilton.

The Manchester, Claremont and Hooksett stores have already been removed from the store locator function, and the “Lowe's” signs at the former Manchester location have been taken down. The Manchester closing leaves Lowe's without a location in the largest city among the three northern New England states.