Washington may be hitting the brakes, but the private sector is still rolling ahead, helping create nearly 200,000 jobs a month, on average, since the beginning of the year and forcing the overall unemployment rate in April down to its lowest level since the end of 2008.

This push-and-pull dynamic was evident in data released Friday by the Labor Department, as private employers added 176,000 people to their payrolls even as the public sector shed an additional 11,000 workers.

The latest figures painted a somewhat brighter picture of the overall economy than had been expected as the government sharply revised upward its estimate for job creation in the previous two months. Those revisions concluded that the economy generated a robust 332,000 jobs in February, not the 268,000 originally reported, and 138,000 in March, up from 88,000.

The news sent the stock market soaring to new highs, with major stock market indexes closing up 1 percent for the day.