WASHINGTON — The U.S. jobs report for March delivered a mixed message Friday as hiring fell to its weakest pace in nearly a year. Yet at the same time, the unemployment rate reached the lowest level in nearly a decade.

Employers added just 98,000 jobs, the Labor Department said. That was barely half the previous month’s gain and a potential sign of weakening growth. Yet economists largely downplayed the drop, attributing much of it to a snowstorm that hit the Midwest and Northeast just as the government was compiling its hiring data.

The steady job market has been a pillar of a resilient U.S. economy, and most analysts expect hiring to return to a pace closer to 178,000, the average monthly job gain for the past three months and close to the monthly average for 2016.

Most economists had predicted a drop-off in hiring in March after robust gains in both January and February, but the drop was worse than projected.

“It’s very premature to conclude that there’s been an interruption of what has been fantastic momentum in the labor market,” said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust.

The unemployment rate declined last month to 4.5 percent, the lowest rate since May 2007, from 4.7 percent in February. The rate fell because nearly a half-million more Americans reported finding jobs, the government said.

That result appeared to be at odds with the reported gain of a mere 98,000 jobs. The difference reflects a little-known aspect of the monthly jobs reports: The count of jobs and the number of people who reported being hired are compiled by two separate surveys.

The survey that counts people with jobs offered other encouraging news: The number of part-time workers who would prefer full-time work fell.