LITTLE ROCK — The nation’s unemployment rate dipped to 8.2 percent in March from 8.3 percent, but the economy added a relatively weak 120,000 jobs compared with 240,000 in February, the Labor Department said Friday.
Many economists had expected March to be the fourth consecutive month of solid employment growth, with the addition of more than 205,000 jobs, according to a Bloomberg survey.
In the week leading up to Friday’s report, statistics suggested that hiring was picking up pace.
“It is obviously disappointing,” said Cliff Waldman, a senior economist at the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation. “This provides some pretty good evidence that part of the strength of the prior two months was probably seasonal.”
A mild winter may have partially influenced the hiring in March. January and February were unusually warm, which allowed construction firms and other companies to hire people for outdoor work several weeks earlier than usual - effectively stealing jobs from March.
The Labor Department estimates that 12.7 million Americans were jobless in March, little changed from February. In Arkansas, the unemployment rate for February was 7.6 percent.
President Barack Obama, speaking at a forum at the White House aimed at promoting jobs and other economic opportunities for women, conceded the employment situation needed improvement.
“It’s clear to every American that there will still be ups and downs along the way and that we’ve got a lot more work to do,” he said. “No issue is more important than restoring economic security for all our families in the wake of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.”
Republican Mitt Romney, the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said Obama’s economic policies have failed and “the president’s excuses have run out.”
“Millions of Americans are paying a high price for President Obama’s economic policies, and more and more people are growing so discouraged that they are dropping out of the labor force altogether,” the former Massachusetts governor said in a statement released by his campaign.
Automatic Data Processing, a payroll processor, reported Wednesday that private-sector employment gains reached 209,000 in March. The company’s report, which is derived from payroll data, showed that small businesses, or those with 49 employees or less, accounted for about half of the gains. Companies in the services sector added 164,000 jobs.
On Thursday, weekly Labor Department data pointed in an encouraging direction as well. It showed that first time filings for unemployment benefits fell to 357,000 in the week that ended March 31. The four-week average, considered a better indication of the trend, was the lowest since April 2008.
The monthly federal jobs report is one of the most widely awaited releases of data for economists and market analysts, who drill into the numbers for insight into how the recovery is unfolding.
While the stock markets in the United States and most of Europe were closed for Good Friday, limited futures trading linked to the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average showed that both were off more than 1 percent after the numbers were released. U.S. stock markets reopen Monday.
Wall Street has rallied in the first three months of this year, and the brighter job numbers had added to improvements in consumer sentiment and the outlook for the economy. Still, many economists caution that there are head winds as oil prices rise, putting a possible damper on consumer behavior just as it is showing signs of life.
The jobs report also has implications for the financial markets because of its impact on Federal Reserve policies. Fed officials are particularly concerned about the recent rate of job growth, according to an account given Tuesday of the central bank’s minutes from its last meeting in March. The minutes suggested that the prospect for any new measures, like asset purchases to stimulate growth, were fading. Markets fell after the release of the minutes.
The portion of the overall population that was employed in March fell slightly, to 58.5 percent from 58.6 percent, said Christine Owens, the executive director of the National Employment Law Project.
“We should not attach too much significance to one month’s numbers, especially in light of overall positive trends,” she said in a statement.
The biggest hit to the job market in March was at retail stores. They shed nearly 34,000 jobs after cutting nearly 29,000 in February. Temporary-help firms dropped almost 8,000 - a potentially bad sign for the job market because companies often hire temporary workers before adding full-timers.
But manufacturers added 37,000 jobs. Hotels and restaurants added 39,000. And the business-and-professional-services sector added 31,000 jobs.
There also was improvement in a broader measure of weakness in the job market. The percentage of Americans who are either unemployed, have given up looking for work or have had to settle for part-time work fell from 14.9 percent in February to 14.5 percent last month.
More than 5.3 million Americans, or 42.5 percent of the unemployed, had been out of work for six months or longer in March.
Hiring was slightly better in January and February than first reported. The government revised up job growth in those months by 4,000. Job growth for January was revised from 284,000 to 275,000, and the change for February was revised from 227,000 to 240,000.
Hourly wages in March rose 5 cents to an average $23.39. The average workweek, though, fell slightly to 34.5 hours.
The median projection of 80 economists in a Bloomberg survey called for a 205,000 gain in March employment.
Information for this article was contributed by Christine Hauser of The New York Times; by Paul Wiseman of The Associated Press; and by Roger Runningen, John McCormick and Timothy R. Homan of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/07/2012