An unemployment rate of 8.2 percent means nearly 12.7 million Americans searched for a job last month but did not find one.
The figure signifies little change from the previous month's rate of 8.3 percent. Employers added 120,000 nonfarm jobs to their payrolls in March.
March's hiring took place at a slower place than the previous three months, when nonfarm employment increased by an average of 246,000 jobs per month.
The government counted job gains in the manufacturing, food service and health care fields. Retail employers downsized in March.
The official unemployment rate does not include people who work part-time jobs only because full-time jobs are unavailable, people who want to work but did not look for a job during the past month for personal reasons or discouraged workers who have given up hope of finding a job. Including those people in the calculation would result in an unemployment rate of 14.5 percent. In February, including those people would have resulted in a 14.9 percent jobless rate.
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