WASHINGTON — A month ago, many economists fretted that the 10-year U.S. expansion looked wobbly. But after the government reported Friday that hiring rebounded in March, the economy suddenly looks sturdy again.

Growth has weakened since last year to something closer to the modest pace that has prevailed for most of the nearly decade-long expansion. The jolt from the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cuts and greater government spending last year has faded. And the global economy has swiveled from a driver of the U.S. economy to a headwind.

Yet last month’s solid job gain of 196,000 may also help undercut any lingering fears that a recession might arrive over the next year or so. The economy’s slow but steady pace of growth is likely to keep inflation low and perhaps sustain the expansion, which is set to become the longest on record in July.

By historical measures, the expansion has fallen short of the sometimes-explosive growth that businesses and workers enjoyed in the past but that often led to financial bubbles or economic excesses — and eventually a recession. “Lackluster means that you’re not overheating,” Josh Wright, chief economist at recruiting software maker iCIMS, said of the current expansion. “It’s more stable, and we’ll have fewer imbalances. It looks like we’ll be able to prolong this recovery even further.”

In its monthly jobs report Friday, the government also said the unemployment rate remained near a five-decade low of 3.8% in March.

So far this year, job growth has averaged a decent 180,000 a month. That is down, though, from last year’s 223,000 monthly average. And it marks the lowest three-month average gain since November 2017, before the tax cuts took effect.

Wage growth also slipped a bit in March, with average hourly pay increasing 3.2% from a year earlier. That is down from February’s year-over-year gain of 3.4%, the best in a decade.

“Today’s data paint a picture of resilient U.S. demand that has stepped down to a more moderate pace of growth following last year’s robust gains,” said Jonathan Millar, senior economist at Barclays.

Investors took Friday’s jobs data in stride. The stock market was up slightly in afternoon trading, extending a rally that has lifted the financial markets this year. Given that that hiring and wage growth aren’t growing so fast as to threaten high inflation, the Federal Reserve is likely to stay on the sidelines indefinitely, forgoing interest rate hikes, economists said.

As recently as December, Fed officials had forecast that they would raise rates twice this year. But in March, after financial markets turned volatile, inflation showed signs of slipping, and concerns grew about the global economy, the Fed said it would likely keep rates unchanged in 2019.

Yet the jobs data also provides little reason for the Fed to cut rates, analysts said.