On the jobs numbers, the July figure was well below the revised 298,000 surge reported in June and lower than the 229,000 figure now reported for May.

The figures for July confirmed that a gradual healing of the job market remained on track, even as it underscored just how much more needs to be done to reach a level where most people who want to work can find a job relatively easily. It showed, for example, that over the last year employers added 2.57 million jobs, the steepest rate of job creation for any 12-month period in the five-year expansion. But the proportion of the country’s population that reported having a job in July was unchanged at 59 percent, a number that was up only barely from its 58.7 percent level of a year ago, and still near its lowest levels since the late 1970s.

“The economy still has a huge amount of headwind out there from the popping of the credit bubble,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist for MFR Inc., in an interview before the labor market numbers were released Friday. “We’re not through that by any means.”

The Hamilton Project, a Washington group affiliated with the Brookings Institution, calculated that the economy had a “jobs gap” at the end of July of 5.7 million jobs, the number needed to return to prerecession employment levels while absorbing the people who enter the labor force each month.

For all the shortcomings, the economy nonetheless appears to be in better shape than at any time since the recession hit in late 2007. So far this year, for example, the economy has added an average of 230,000 jobs a month, compared with 194,000 last year, 174,000 in 2011 and only 88,000 in 2010.

“This is another solid report that shows we are sustaining the momentum of broad-based growth in the economy,” said Thomas E. Perez, the labor secretary, in a telephone interview. He cited the growth in well-paying professional and business services jobs as evidence that the economy is not creating just low-paid jobs. The retail and manufacturing sectors also added jobs.