The U.S. unemployment rate for March remained unchanged at 9.7%. The economy added 162,000 jobs in March, of which 48,000 were temporary U.S. census workers. Private employers added 123,000 jobs in March.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also revised the January and February numbers, both of which now show job gains as opposed to the originally reported job losses. The January report now shows that the economy added 14,000 jobs during the money instead of losing 26,000. In February, another 14,000 jobs were added as opposed to an initial estimate of 36,000 job losses.

There is a growing sense that the US economy may have finally turned the corner on jobs, and that a slow, but steady growth is now underway. Other positive signals in the March report include a boost of 40,000 temporary jobs and the addition of 17,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing jobs have grown by a total of 45,000 in the first three months of 2010.

The takeaway from this month’s report is that unemployment is not getting worse and that job creation, as minimal as it is, is good enough for now. This is all good news.

The difficulty facing the economy is that the number of job seekers is likely to rise as fast, or faster, as the number of new jobs created. Historically, the U.S. economy has to find jobs for about 100,000 new entrants to the workforce every month. The 123,000 new private jobs in March are just barely enough to meet that goal.

Another bit of bad news from the March report is the growing number of unemployed that have been without a job for more than 26 weeks. That number increased by 414,000, putting the total number of long-term unemployed at 6.5 million American. That’s 44% of the total 15 million unemployed.

The $17 billion HIRE Act passed by Congress and signed by the President is not likely to make much of a dent in these numbers. Washington can let the economy take its due, slow course or it can try to give it a bigger shove than the HIRE Act.

Either way, though, today’s report is decent news about the direction of the job market–improving instead of collapsing. There’s little chance that the Federal Reserve will consider raising interest rates, and when the markets open on Monday, the upward trend should continue. Maybe the lagging indicator is finally catching up.

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