The unemployment rate in Arkansas for March was 3.8 percent, unchanged from February, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday.
The national unemployment rate was 4.1 percent in March.
From June to January, the state's unemployment rate was 3.7 percent each month. It rose to 3.8 percent in February and March.
Other than the unemployment rate remaining low, there was little good news in the March report, said Mervin Jebaraj, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
The number of unemployed Arkansans inched up by 549 in March for a total of 939 for the first three months of the year, said Michael Pakko, chief economist at the Arkansas Economic Development Institute at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
The number of employed fell for the sixth-straight month for a total loss of 5,741, Pakko said.
"That certainly indicates some weakness in employment growth," Pakko said.
Because of the decline in employed, the civilian labor force -- the number of employed people and the number of people looking for work -- has dropped by 4,893 since September, Pakko said.
Job growth for most of last year was about 1 percent, Jebaraj said.
"Since November, we've been growing by about half of that," Jebaraj said.
The number of nonfarm payroll jobs grew by 4,900 since March last year.
Almost all of that growth came in the state's metropolitan areas, Jebaraj said.
By another comparison, for most of last year, there was job growth in the state's major metropolitan areas and in rural areas, Jebaraj said.
"Now, at least in the last several months, it looks like employment growth has slowed in the metropolitan areas and has gone negative in the nonmetro areas," Jebaraj said. "So that broad-based growth that we had seems to have gone away."
Seven job sectors saw job increases compared with March 2017 and four saw declines.
Manufacturing posted the best performance, increasing by 2,000 jobs since March 2017.
Both the construction and information sectors had the biggest declines, losing 1,200 jobs each. The construction losses were attributed in part to recent bad weather, said the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services.
Friday's jobs report sheds light on Arkansas' economic evolution since June 2009, when the current economic expansion began, said Greg Kaza, executive director of the Arkansas Policy Foundation in Little Rock.
The three major goods-producing sectors -- construction, manufacturing and the mining and logging sector -- account for 17.5 percent of jobs, down from 19.2 percent in June 2009, Kaza said.
The seven major private services-producing sectors -- trade, transportation and utilities; information; financial activities; professional and business services; educational and health services; leisure and hospitality; and other services -- comprise 65.5 percent of jobs, up from 62.1 percent, Kaza said.
Within the services-producing sectors, the professional and business-services sector has been a strong performer, growing from 9.6 percent to 11.7 percent, Kaza said.
Government jobs declined from 18.7 percent to 17 percent now, Kaza said.
Hawaii reported the lowest unemployment rate in the country last month at 2.1 percent, followed by New Hampshire and North Dakota at 2.6 percent each, and Iowa and Nebraska at 2.8 percent each.
Alaska had the highest rate, 7.3 percent, followed by New Mexico at 5.6 percent, West Virginia at 5.4 percent, and Arizona and Nevada at 4.9 percent each.
Business on 04/21/2018