Santa Clara County and the East Bay gained jobs at a brisk pace during March, even though the pace of job growth slowed drastically in the Bay Area, according to new economic reports on Friday.

Bay Area employers added 1,300 jobs during March, well below the 8,700 they added in February. It was the weakest employment growth in the Bay Area for a single month since September, when 100 jobs were added, the state Employment Department reported.

“We are in a soft patch,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist with Bank of the West. “But it’s not necessarily a recession signal.”

The slump appears to be connected directly to poor performance by the technology sector, which has been hit by turmoil in the stock market and a slowdown in China.

Nevertheless, the region remains an economic leader.

“Bay Area job growth continues to outpace the state and the nation,” said Steve Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy.

However, during March, the tech sector created no jobs in the Bay Area’s three major urban centers, Santa Clara County, the East Bay, and the San Francisco-San Mateo region, this newspaper’s analysis of figures from the EDD and Beacon Economics shows. Santa Clara County had no change in tech employment, while the San Francisco area lost 100 tech jobs and the East Bay gained 100.

“The tech sector seems to be losing steam,” said Mark Vitner, a senior economist with San Francisco-based Wells Fargo Bank. “And there is clearly a slowing in the Bay Area.”

That flat performance comes at a time when the Bay Area’s three primary engines for economic growth are increasingly dependent on high-tech jobs for their employment gains.

Over the one year period that ended in March, Santa Clara County, the East Bay, and the San Francisco-San Mateo region added 102,600 jobs. About 34,900 jobs were added by the tech sector. That means more than one-third of the job gains in these three million-job economies were from a single industry: high tech.

During the most recent 12 months, technology companies produced 44 percent of the job gains in the San Francisco-San Mateo area, 36 percent in Santa Clara County, and 15 percent in the East Bay.

In March, Santa Clara County and the East Bay both added 1,000 jobs. But the San Francisco-San Mateo region lost 800 jobs.

“The Santa Clara County area is still showing strong numbers,” said Robert Kleinhenz, an economist and executive director of research with Beacon Economics. “But it’s slower, and that’s to be expected. It’s just not possible to sustain the kind of job growth we’ve been having.”

Of the seven metro regions in the Bay Area, five metro areas shed jobs during March, according to figures compiled by the EDD and analyzed by Beacon Economics.

California added a scant 4,200 jobs during March.The statewide unemployment rate improved to 5.4 percent last month, down from 5.5 percent in February.

Jobless rates were unchanged in the Bay Area during March compared with February, but they were at healthy levels.

The unemployment rate was 4.3 percent in the East Bay, 3.8 percent in Santa Clara County and 3.1 percent in San Francisco-San Mateo.

Economists are convinced that the slowdown isn’t going to morph into a protracted downturn.

“Maybe things are settling more into a cruising altitude kind of mode with somewhat slower growth,” Kleinhenz said. “There is still a lot of activity in the Bay Area that suggests the economy there is very healthy.”

Contact George Avalos at 408-859-5167. Follow him at Twitter.com/georgeavalos.