U.S. hiring slows, but unemployment declines

The nation's job total grew by just 98,000 last month, while the jobless rate fell to 4.5 percent.

U.S. employers cut back sharply on hiring in March, yet Friday’s jobs report still had much to be encouraged about, including a drop in the unemployment rate to 4.5 percent, the lowest in a decade.

Employers added just 98,000 jobs, the Labor Department said. That was barely half the previous month’s gain.

Yet unemployment dropped from 4.7 percent, reaching its lowest point since May 2007. While the rate has fallen in the past because of unemployed workers who had given up looking, it happened this time because of a healthy gain in the number of people with jobs.

“Within the disappointing 98,000 net new jobs added, there seems to be a lot more going on beneath the surface, and what is going beneath the surface is mostly good,” said Mark Vitner, an economist at Wells Fargo.

In the past three months, employers have added an average of 178,000 jobs a month. That’s much better than March’s increase and is closer to the underlying trend, economists said.

That’s also just below the average gains of 187,000 jobs a month last year. Hiring should rebound closer to that level in the coming months, economists say.

One reason last month’s weak gain was probably a blip is that harsh winter weather in the Northeast and the Midwest most likely hurt hiring in construction, retail and other weather-sensitive industries. Also, construction companies reported huge job gains in January and February, when the weather was unseasonably warm, so they didn’t need to engage in their usual spring hiring.

The job gains last month, while tepid, occurred in better-paying industries, such as manufacturing and a category that includes accounting, engineering and other professional services.

Lower-paying fields, such as retail, cut jobs, while a category that includes restaurants and hotels posted a small gain.

An alternative unemployment measure, which includes involuntary parttime workers, fell to 8.9 percent, its lowest level since December 2007, when the Great Recession started.

That’s down from a peak in 2010 of 17.1 percent.