The U.S. economy added 120,000 jobs last month, the smallest gain since October and well below what economists predicted. However, unemployment unexpectedly decreased slightly, to 8.2 percent, according to the U.S. Labor Department, which issued its monthly jobs report this morning.

Stocks aren’t trading today as the markets are closed in observance of Good Friday and the start of Passover; however, the weak report is affecting futures, with Reuters speculating it could mean a Monday market decline.

The sharply lower-than-expected numbers (a MarketWatch survey predicted an optimistic 210,00 increase) were stark evidence of what the Federal Reserve has been saying; without a pickup in economic activity the strong growth of the last two quarters would be hard to sustain.

After two years of looking internally to fill vacancies, companies in 2011 again began to hire new workers, relying on referrals and job boards for nearly 50 percent of their external hires.

Social media, though it accounted for only 3.5 percent of those external hires, evidences a much greater impact on hiring than the numbers would suggest, influencing candidates whose hiring ends up being attributed to other sources.

These are but a few of the findings in the just released 2012 CareerXroads Sources of Hire survey. Conducted now for a decade by the talent consultancy of Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler, the annual survey queries the recruiting leaders of America’s largest companies about where they source the hires they make. Additional questions touch on emerging trends.

While Crispin and Mehler caution that the results reflect only the hiring practices of the participating companies, the survey has come to be an industry standard, occupying the top Google results for “source of hire,” and is one of the tools recruiters use in developing their own recruiting strategy.

This year’s survey found that in 2011 the 36 participating companies, which collectively have 1.2 million employees, filled 59 percent of their 213,375 openings externally. It’s a dramatic change from the last two years when half the openings were filled by internal transfers and promotions.