President Trump contends that the Federal Reserve slowed the economy last year by pushing interest rates too high, and has said he intends to nominate the conservative economist Stephen Moore and the former pizza chain executive Herman Cain to the central bank’s board.

“I personally think the Fed should drop rates,” Mr. Trump said on Friday.

Mr. Trump won’t necessarily get his way on interest rates. The Fed has already taken a softer stance: As recently as December, the central bank said it could raise rates in 2019, but it has since signaled that it probably wouldn’t do so.

Economists said the latest jobs report showed that the Fed’s willingness to hold interest rates at current levels was probably the right response for the economy.

“It doesn’t tell the Fed that it’s doing the wrong thing by remaining patient,” said Ellen Zentner, chief United States economist at Morgan Stanley.

The March jobs gain probably won’t be enough to dispel all the pessimism, though.

The report contained evidence of a slowdown in manufacturing, a sector that has performed well over the past two years. Manufacturers shed 6,000 jobs in March, driven mostly by the auto sector, and added just 1,000 in February. Last year, the sector on average added 22,000 jobs a month.

Some manufacturers have been hit by tariffs imposed by other countries in response to those put in place by Mr. Trump.

Rob Parmentier, chief executive of Marquis Yachts in Green Bay, Wis., said sales to some of the company’s biggest export markets had stalled as a result of the tariffs.