The Massachusetts unemployment rate dropped to 4.9 percent in February, its lowest point since March 2008.

Job gains last month were a relatively meager 800 and job gains of 1,600 in the public sector offset private sector job losses, according to numbers provided by the Office of Labor and Workforce Development.

Bay Staters, especially in the eastern part of the state, spent much of February digging out of record snowfalls.

Last month, the state’s unemployment rate was 5.1 percent, the lowest since May 2008. Last year, the state added 60,700 jobs, the most in more than a decade and an average of about 5,000 a month.

Nationwide, the February unemployment rate was 5.5 percent. The last time the state’s unemployment rate rose was May 2013 when it climbed to 6.8 percent.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the unemployment rate for veterans who served during recent wars declined to 7.2 percent in 2014, a figure that still outpaces the rate among the general population.

Labor and Workforce Development Secretary Ronald Walker is heading up a task force seeking to find solutions to chronic employment difficulties among people of color, recently returned veterans and people with disabilities.