Analysts: State’s puny March job growth likely an anomaly

The Bay State added a meager 200 jobs during March, a steep decline from the output of the first two months of the year, though experts cautioned that one 31-day snapshot may not mean much.

Although employers added more than 10,000 jobs in both January and February, the staggeringly low March number may indicate that the job market isn’t as robust as it may seem.

But Alan Clayton-Matthews, an economist at Northeastern University, said: “You can’t read too much into one month.

“It could be that some of the people that employers would have hired in March got hired earlier in the year,” he said.

John Landers, a Boston Metro market manager for the staffing firm Robert Half, agreed, pointing out there’s still more job openings than qualified applicants.

“It’s still a very candidate-driven market,” he said. “They have the options, they’re dictating titles, salaries.”

Over the past month, the state’s unemployment rate rose from 3.4 percent to 3.6 percent, an increase that was likely driven by the addition to the labor force of 34,000 people who haven’t been looking for work, but who may feel more confident in their ability to find employment.

And as all eyes will be on the April jobs numbers, Clayton-Matthews warned that Massachusetts may soon run out of workers for the jobs that local companies are looking to fill, which could ultimately deter businesses from moving to or expanding in the Bay State.

“Perhaps the economy is slowing and it’s being constrained by the number of available workers,” Clayton-Matthews said. “The thing I worry about is not having enough workers for firms.”