NEW YORK CITY—Freddie Mac said Thursday that average fixed mortgage rates fell across the board following last Friday's dismal Labor Department report on the pace of hiring in March. Non-farm payrolls increased last month by an underwhelming 126,000 jobs, slightly more than half the expected 247,000 positions. The report sent a shiver through the stock market over fears that it portended a slowdown in the still-recovering domestic economy.

Yet Cushman & Wakefield's Ken McCarthy doesn't see such a slowdown in the offing. “The March employment report was certainly a surprise and much weaker than generally expected,” writes McCarthy, senior managing director, economic analysis and forecasting for C&W, in the firm's weekly Research Report. “But it will take more than one weaker-than-expected report to dent the current momentum in the economy.”

In a way, the March jobs report picked right up from previous months. “Although total job growth was slower than over the past year, employment in the key office-using sectors—professional and business services, financial and information—increased by a total of 50,000 jobs, indicating that the demand for office space remains robust,” McCarthy writes. It was, he adds, in keeping with the growth trend for office-using employment, which has seen 50,000 or more added in 10 of the past 12 months.

Severe winter weather likely contributed to the slowdown, McCarthy writes, and he cites the likelihood that businesses were “a bit more cautious in the first quarter after the strong hiring that took place in 2014, which was the fastest in 15 years. There was a high level of optimism about the economy as we entered 2015, but the economic statistics in the first two months have been weaker than generally anticipated.”

During that two-month period, writes McCarthy, both consumer and business spending as well as output slowed instead of picking up. “The slowdown has led to a bit of a 'wait and see' attitude,” he writes. “Was the slowdown a result of bad weather, or is the economy slowing? We won't know the answer until we see what happens with consumer spending, housing, business investment and production in March, April and May.”

That being said, McCarthy cites some early signs that the slowdown will prove be only temporary. February's job openings reached their highest level in 15 years in February, suggesting that demand for labor continues to be strong.

“That healthy demand should eventually lead to faster wage growth and higher incomes, which will likely boost consumer spending,” McCarthy writes. “We saw a hint of that with the auto sales numbers for March. US motor vehicle sales in March ran at an annual rate of over 17.0 million, only the third time in the past eight years that sales have been that strong.”

Furthermore, McCarthy notes that average hourly earnings increased 0.3% in March, the third time in the past five months that earnings have risen by 0.3% or more. Over the latest six months, earnings growth has run at a 2.5% annual rate for the strongest six months in the past two years.

“This is a modest pick-up in the pace of wage growth, which has lagged in the current expansion, but wages are moving in the right direction,” writes McCarthy. He adds, though, “Average hourly earnings were still up only 2.1% from a year ago. While we are anticipating faster growth in wages as the year progresses, we aren't there yet.”