Employers planned to trim payrolls by 36,594 in March, with most of the cuts in the energy sector, outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said.

The March total was 27.6 percent lower than the 50,579 job cuts in February. It was the lowest monthly total since December, when 32,640 were announced.

Despite last month’s decline, the March figure was 6.4 percent higher than the same month a year ago, making it the fourth consecutive year-over-year increase.

Through the first quarter of 2015, employers announced 140,214 job cuts, up 15.6 percent from the 120,341 cuts tracked the first three months of 2014. The first quarter saw 17 percent more job cuts than in the final quarter of 2014, when 119,763 job cuts were recorded.

Of the 140,214 job cuts announced in the first quarter, 47,610 were directly attributed to falling oil prices.

“Without these oil related cuts, we could have been looking at one of lowest quarters for job-cutting since the mid-90s when three-month tallies totaled fewer than 100,000. However, the drop in the price of oil has taken a significant toll on oil field services, energy providers, pipelines, and related manufacturing this year,” CEO John Challenger said in a release.

First quarter job cuts were dominated by the energy sector, with 37,811 announced job cuts. That total is up 3,900 percent compared with a year ago, when fewer than 1,000 energy cuts were reported.