Hiring in the United States stood firm in April, as businesses shrugged off uncertainty brought on by higher energy prices resulting from the war in Iran.

Employers added 115,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported on Friday, surpassing economists’ expectations and providing a note of cautious optimism that the job market was emerging at last from the low-hire, low-fire stasis that characterized much of the past two years. The unemployment rate remained steady at 4.3 percent.

April was the second consecutive month of solid job growth, following the 185,000 jobs added in March, after revisions. At first blush, the numbers took on the sheen of an upward trend.

The overall picture is not quite as chipper, and it is not clear whether the robust recent hiring will translate into enduring momentum. Taking into account dismal hiring in February, the last three months have added a relatively glacial 48,000 jobs on average. The labor force shrank in April and the number of unemployed workers rose. Wage growth ticked up slightly but has been trending down.

“We’ll need to see a couple more months of this; it has been volatile,” said Matthew Martin, senior economist at Oxford Economics. “But if we see sustained growth, obviously that would be a major positive for the economy.”

The jobs tally was taken in mid-April, as employers were still evaluating the impact of the war in Iran. If higher gas prices persist and consumers pull back more broadly to compensate, economists anticipate that could dampen job creation and lift the unemployment rate.

For now, the job market appears to be unbowed by the whirl of geopolitical uncertainty. Although health care and related professions in social assistance still dominated job gains last month, adding nearly 54,000 positions, healthy job growth also occurred in other sectors.

Transportation and warehousing, an industry that has been buffeted by President Trump’s unpredictable tariff policy, added 30,000 positions. The retail trade and leisure and hospitality industries also tacked on jobs, suggesting that businesses brushed aside concerns for now that consumers would pull back spending to compensate for elevated prices at the gas pump.

Job losses remain exceedingly low, even as some high-profile technology and finance companies announced layoffs that stoked fears about the impact of artificial intelligence. The average workweek rose slightly to 34.3 hours, suggesting that employers are not cutting workers’ hours.

Dawn Gallagher, the president of hospitality at Crescent Hotels & Resorts, a hotel management company based in Fairfax, Va., said she was optimistic about the months ahead.

Although there was some weakness in markets such as Washington, D.C., where cuts to federal jobs and other political factors were depressing demand, many of the company’s 120 properties in the United States and Canada were performing well.

Events this summer, including celebrations around the nation’s semiquincentennial, could buoy properties in cities around the country, she said. And the soaring cost of airfares, driven by higher fuel prices, could prompt more Americans to travel domestically instead of venturing abroad this summer.

As a result, the company, which has more than 10,000 employees, intends to keep its head count relatively stable.

“We have some of those summer demand things that are going to keep the summer stronger than maybe if there wasn’t anything happening in the summer,” she said.

Becky Frankiewicz, the president of ManpowerGroup, a staffing company, said she was seeing evidence that hiring was picking up after last year’s lull, particularly in the technology sector around A.I. infrastructure. Mathematicians and data scientists were in notable demand, she said.

“I spend a lot of my time speaking to executives,” she said. “This wait-and-see is giving way a little bit to, ‘OK, let’s open the spigot just a bit in very specific areas and start investing in the future.’”

But there are also warning signals flashing through the April report — and the broader economy. The number of workers employed part time because they could not find full-time jobs bounced up by 445,000. Wages increased 3.6 percent compared with last year, but the rate has been broadly falling even as prices rise, pinching workers and forcing many to dip into their savings.

And while workers who have jobs are generally secure, those looking for opportunities are often coming up empty. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates ages 22 to 27 has soared and stood at about 5.6 percent in the first quarter of the year, according to an analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Megan Reinhardt-Baird is one of the many young degree-holders struggling to find a job. Ms. Reinhardt-Baird, 24, graduated from Brigham Young University in 2024 and received a master’s degree in international development from the London School of Economics in December.

She dreamed of working in a job related to social impact and began applying to positions last April, while she was still in graduate school. She has been looking for a job ever since.

Disheartened and increasingly desperate, she has broadened her search to include entry-level jobs in market research and insurance. Between early January and late February, she said, she applied to 80 jobs, which she tracked in a spreadsheet. None resulted in an interview.

Ms. Reinhardt-Baird, who lives in Long Beach, Calif., said she and her husband, an engineer, never expected they would have to rely on one income, though she said she felt fortunate that his salary has kept them afloat.

Still, she is worried about her career prospects and her future.

“I feel less optimistic that I will ever have a job that will feel fulfilling to me,” she said. “Some days, I don’t feel optimistic that I will get a job at all.”

Reflecting this dour outlook, consumer sentiment in May fell to its lowest level on record, according to the University of Michigan’s survey.

Whether, and how long, hiring can stay on a solid trajectory is not clear. The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, along with the aging of the population, is shrinking the available pool of labor, meaning employers do not need to add as many workers to keep up with population growth.

At the same time, unknowns related to the war in Iran and the affect of high gas prices could cause companies to curtail their hiring.

“We’re still in the seventh inning,” said Beth Ann Bovino, the chief economist at U.S. Bank. “There’s no real win just yet.”