U.S. employers struggle to fill millions of open jobs.

Numbers weaken, but report sees a healthy market

WASHINGTON — U.S. workers are increasingly benefiting as employers struggle to fill millions of open jobs.

More people who had given up looking for work are renewing their job hunts, more employees are confident enough to quit to look for other jobs, and pay is gradually picking up.

U.S. employers added just 103,000 jobs in March, the Labor Department said Friday, the fewest in six months. And job growth in January and February was revised down by a combined 50,000.

But the unemployment rate remained 4.1 percent, a 17-year low, the government said. And the overall U.S. jobs report suggested that the labor market remains fundamentally healthy.

The pullback in hiring in March was likely payback in part for an explosive gain in February, economists said. Employers added 326,000 jobs that month — the largest monthly haul in two years.

“Overall, looking through the volatility, employment growth is trending higher, and wage growth is starting to heat up,” said Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics.

The government's report also suggested that employers are trying harder to fill jobs by hiring people they might have overlooked before.

That's helping people who were previously left behind.

For example, the number of long-term unemployed — people out of work for six months or longer — has fallen sharply in the past two years, to just 1.3 million. That's down from a peak of 6.8 million not long after the Great Recession ended.

For years after the recession, economists worried that longterm unemployment would leave millions of Americans without up-to-date skills, potentially unable to find work again.

More Americans are also encouraged about their job-finding prospects and have come off the sidelines to seek work. The government counts people who are out of work as unemployed only if they're searching for jobs.

Many employers are being forced to offer higher pay to keep and attract workers. Average hourly pay rose 2.7 percent in March compared with a year earlier, a slight pickup from February.

Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan, calculates that wages grew 3.2 percent in the first three months of the year, the biggest such gain since the recession.