Hiring slowdown fuels sense of uncertainty

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

For months, the U.S. economy’s strength has been flagging.

Manufacturing slowed. Fewer homes were built. Cheaper gas failed to ignite consumer spending. Yet month after month, employers kept on hiring vigorously.

In March, the economy’s slump finally overtook the job market.

Employers added just 126,000 workers — the fewest since December 2013 — snapping a 12-month streak of gains above 200,000. At the same time, the unemployment rate remained at 5.5 percent.

The slowdown reported Friday by the Labor Department posed a puzzle to economists:

Was the tepid job gain a temporary blip due mainly to a harsh winter and an economy adjusting to much lower oil prices?

Or did it mark a return to the middling performance that’s defined much of the nearly 6-year-old recovery from the Great Recession?

No one will know for sure until the government’s monthly employment reports later this spring help gauge the direction of the job market. That leaves the U.S. economy — until very recently the envy of other industrialized nations — facing a renewed sense of uncertainty.