The number breaks three straight months of job gains exceeding 200,000. March jobs growth falls short

The economy added a lower-than-expected 120,000 jobs in March, and the unemployment rate fell slightly to 8.2 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday.

That broke three straight months of job gains exceeding 200,000 — suggesting that the recovery continues to be unsteady, with factors including high gasoline prices.


The March number was a wide miss of Wall Street projections that payrolls would increase by 203,000 and ends what had been something of a winning streak for President Barack Obama.

But the White House portrayed the news as a natural fluctuation in an overall upward thrust for the economy.

“We welcome today’s news that our businesses created 121,000 jobs and the unemployment rate ticked down,” Obama said Friday morning at the opening of a White House forum on women and the economy. “It’s clear to every American that there will still be ups and downs along the way, and we’ve got more work to do.”

Retailers shed 34,000 jobs, construction lost 7,000 jobs, and temporary work fell by 7,500 jobs in a reversal of recent trends. But manufacturing continued its upswing, boosting its payrolls by 37,000. The unemployment rate fell a tenth of a percentage point despite the meager job gains because 333,000 Americans left or didn’t join the labor force last month, so the decline is nothing to celebrate.

“I think the general summary of most of what we’re seeing in the economy right now is that we’re making progress but we still have a long way to go because we’re coming back from the deepest recession and downturn in our economy in 80 or 90 years,” said Gene Sperling, director of the White House National Economic Council.

Government employment tumbled by 1,000 jobs — not as severe as in past months — but Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told MSNBC that federal spending to ease the pressure on state and local government budgets would aid the recovery.

House Republicans opposed a September proposal by the administration to spend $35 billion to prevent teachers, firefighters and police officers.

Multiple analysts predicted that the gains earlier this year were the result of an unseasonably warm winter, causing businesses to hire more than they should.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told CNBC that the March report reflected the impact of mild weather in previous months and seasonal adjustments to how the numbers are calculated. “This feels to me like seasonals and weather,” he said.

The job growth in those previous months defied the otherwise modest increase in gross domestic product. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke last week described the uptick in hiring as unsustainable, a conclusion backed up by the March figures.

“Keep in mind just how far unemployment has fallen in recent months: GDP growth isn’t fast enough to have continuing declines at that pace,” tweeted Betsey Stevenson, the former chief economist at the Labor Department and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Austan Goolsbee, former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, seconded that analysis. He tweeted that the economy had to grow at more than 2.5 percent to spur hiring, but many analysts project it’s advancing at a slightly slower speed than that.

The monthly numbers “bounce around, but that’s the fundamental math,” he wrote.

Republicans quickly launched into the attack on Obama, seeing an advantage in the disappointing release.

“This is a weak and very troubling jobs report that shows the employment market remains stagnant,” Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney said in a statement. “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. It is increasingly clear the Obama economy is not working and that after three years in office the President’s excuses have run out.”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) took a similar tack.

“Today’s report shows that families and small businesses are still struggling to get by because of President Obama’s failed economic policies. Unemployment is far too high, paychecks are shrinking, gas prices are rising faster than ever, and our debt now exceeds the size of our entire economy,” Boehner said.

The previous reports had been bolstering President Barack Obama’s reelection chances, but Democrats said the figures out Friday were a sign of how much further the economy needs to go.

“Washington cannot lose sight of the fact that the recovery is fragile,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.), chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. “We must stay focused on job creation and Congress must make sure businesses have the support they need to contribute to our economic recovery.”

The stock market was closed for the Passover and Good Friday holidays, so it will be several days until trading can react to Friday’s report.

Kim Hart contributed to this report.