AUGUSTA, Maine (AP)   Maine labor officials say the state set another record for lowest unemployment rate in March.

The unemployment rate dropped to 2.7 percent in March, a drop of a little more than half a percentage point from March 2017. The Maine Department of Labor says that’s the lowest it has been since the current methodology was adopted in 1976.

The labor department says the last time the unemployment rate could have been this low was in 1957. The total number of unemployed people in the state last month was also at its lowest point since 1969. The labor force that year was less than two-thirds the size it is today.

The state said Maine’s unemployment rate was the lowest in more than four decades in February, when it was 2.9 percent.