Job losses jolted the Bay Area during March, and a review of how the region’s employment market is doing in 2018 suggests the area economy has lost some steam so far this year, an unsettling assessment that emerged from state labor statistics released on Friday.

The Bay Area lost 2,300 jobs in March, a downturn that spread to Santa Clara County, which shed 1,200 positions, and the East Bay, which lost 700 jobs, the state Employment Development Department reported. The San Francisco-San Mateo region also was weak, gaining a paltry 100 positions. All the numbers were adjusted for seasonal variations.

In a mirror of the Bay Area downturn, California lost 7,200 jobs in March. However, in a hopeful contrast, the statewide unemployment rate remained unchanged at 4.3 percent, tying a record-low jobless rate culled from a data series that extends back more than four decades to 1976.

Jobless rates in the Bay Area also matched or neared record lows, according to an analysis by Beacon Economics and UC Riverside. During March, the unemployment rate was 3 percent in the East Bay, 2.7 percent in Santa Clara County and 2.3 percent in San Francisco-San Mateo, all improvements over the rates in February. The job totals statistics and the unemployment rates are derived from two different government surveys and sometimes don’t move in tandem.

The East Bay and San Francisco-San Mateo area jobless rates equaled the lowest those urban centers have ever posted, matching the prior record lows that occurred in December 1999. The Santa Clara County rate was just above that metro area’s all-time record, 2.6 percent, which also occurred in December 1999.

Over the one-year period that ended in March, Santa Clara County’s job market was the strongest among the nine-county region’s three major urban centers.

During those 12 months, Santa Clara County experienced a 2.6 percent increase in total jobs, while the increase in job counts was 1.7 percent in the East Bay and 1.6 percent in the San Francisco-San Mateo region. The Bay Area job market grew 1.8 percent during the one-year period that ended in March.

Nevertheless, the pace of job gains so far in 2018 is considerably weaker than what occurred over a similar period in 2017, this news organization’s analysis of the state employment figures shows.

“The figures say there is a slowdown going on, but that happened before in the first half of 2017, and it proved to be temporary,” said Stephen Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

During the first three months of 2018, the Bay Area averaged a gain of roughly 5,700 jobs a month, down from an average of 8,100 jobs a month over the same three months in 2017.

The East Bay averaged gains of 2,500 a month so far this year, compared with an average of 3,200 a month in the first three months of last year. Santa Clara County has averaged a gain of 1,700 jobs for the first three months of this year, below the average of 1,800 jobs a month over the first three months of 2017. The San Francisco-San Mateo area has averaged a gain of 800 jobs a month so far in 2018, far under the 2,000 a month in the comparable period of 2017.

Despite the March slump, the tech sector remained robust both in Santa Clara County and the East Bay. Tech companies added 1,200 jobs in the South Bay and 800 in the East Bay, Beacon and UC Riverside reported.

The weakest industries in Santa Clara County were hotels, restaurants and entertainment, which lost 1,400 jobs, and construction, which shed 1,000 positions. The East Bay’s worst industries were hotels, restaurants and entertainment, down 1,600 jobs, and retail, down 500 positions. The San Francisco-San Mateo region’s weakest sector was technology, which lost 1,500 positions. The Beacon and UC Riverside figures were all adjusted for seasonal variations.

“With the industries that are seeing slowing growth in employment, a lot of those are weighted toward lower-paying industries, while the strength is in high-wage industries such as tech,” said Mark Vitner, senior economist with San Francisco-based Wells Fargo Bank.

In the high-cost Bay Area, where home prices have skyrocketed, companies may find it easier to fill technology positions but tougher to hire lower-paid employees whose wages are modest.

“Those lower-paying jobs are either not getting filled or they are being moved out of the Bay Area,” Vitner said.

Some Bay Area residents offered differing perspectives about the job market.

“There are a lot of jobs out there, but it’s still not easy to find work,” said Rajiv Behl, a San Jose resident with considerable experience in the tech sector, including stints at Apple and the NASA Ames Research Center. “Companies have openings but they are demanding too many skills or they don’t want to pay enough.”

Gabriel Baez, a Pittsburg resident, hopes to parlay his experience as an electrician to jobs in the construction industry. Baez first plans to join the carpenters union.

“There’s plenty of construction work and you can see all the cranes that are up there,” Baez said.

Despite the sluggishness in March, experts maintain that the Bay Area will remain a robust employment sector.

“The Bay Area is still in a growth mode and things are still looking good,” Vitner said.

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Plus, huge technology companies such as Mountain View-based Google, Menlo Park-based Facebook, Cupertino-based Apple and Seattle-based Amazon continue to undertake major expansions in the form of leases of huge office buildings or purchases of properties.

“Any weakness looks temporary given all of the investments by tech companies, all the commercial and residential building and the construction we anticipate from transit measures,” Levy said.