Click image for enlargement. Graphic by Mike Johnson.

CARSON CITY -- Nevada continues to outpace every other state in the nation in job creation, with nearly 76,000 jobs added over the past year, the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation reported Monday.

The job creation news came with the release of the March unemployment report, which showed the jobless rate held steady for the third straight month at a historically low, seasonally adjusted rate of 3.9 percent.

"Not only is the state's unemployment rate impressively low, but it is a full 1.3 percentage points lower than the national unemployment rate," said agency director Birgit Baker.

Nevada's 6.8 percent job growth rate was the highest in the country.

The construction industry led the way by adding 20,000 jobs from March 2004.

Some job trends worth watching include the gaining momentum on the employment front in rural Nevada with the renewal of mining, Baker said.

Another is the expected increase in the leisure and hospitality jobs sector in the April report because of the opening of the Wynn Las Vegas resort on April 28.

"It's always interesting to watch the job numbers soar when a major hotel-casino opens and hires thousands of employees," Baker said. "There will definitely be a spike in the industry's job count as a result of Steve Wynn's megaresort opening in Las Vegas."

Each of the major industry groups, with the exception of the information industry, has created at least a thousand new jobs in the past year.

The information industry, which includes telecommunications, has been shedding jobs since 2001 after the collapse of the dot-com bubble, and creation of the national Do Not Call Registry. The information industry lost 200 jobs in the past year.

The Las Vegas area's nonseasonally adjusted unemployment rate was estimated at 3.9 percent in March, down one-tenth of a percentage point from February.

The Reno-Sparks area had an unadjusted rate of 3.8 percent, down four-tenths of a percentage point from February.

In Carson City, unemployment was reported at 4.9 percent, down three-tenths of a percentage point from last month. The Elko area had a rate of 3.5 percent, down four-tenths of a percentage point from February.

Data for the first quarter of the year on rural counties showed five with increases in unemployment from the same quarter last year. Lincoln, Storey, Mineral, Pershing, and White Pine counties all posted increases. Lyon County was unchanged with 6.4 percent unemployment, and Churchill, Douglas, Elko, Esmeralda, Eureka, Humboldt, Lander, and Nye counties each reported a decrease in unemployment.