U.S. employers ramped up their hiring in February, helping to lower the unemployment rate slightly.

The U.S. economy added 236,000 jobs in February, according to a Labor Department report released Friday. That's much stronger growth than in January, when employers hired a revised 119,000 workers.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate dipped to 7.7 percent from 7.9 percent in January, as 12 million workers were counted as unemployed.

The unemployment rate fell partly because more people said they got jobs, but also because 130,000 people dropped out of the labor force.

Economists surveyed by CNN Money had predicted 170,000 jobs were added and the unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in February. Stock futures, which were already higher before the jobs report, rose further following the release.

Private sector employers added 246,000 jobs. Employers have been adding jobs for three straight years, but it's happening too gradually for the labor market to return to where it was at the beginning of the Great Recession. Overall, the U.S. economy lost 8.8 million jobs in the financial crisis, and has only gained back 5.6 million of those jobs since the labor market's height in January 2008.

But the federal government, excluding the postal service, cut 4,200 jobs, in what is likely to be the first of several months of layoffs due to budget cuts. Department of Defense job cuts, which will eventually total around 46,000, started in late January.

State and local governments cut another 10,000 jobs, mostly in education.