After months of steady growth, the Bay Area was jolted in July by a loss of 2,300 jobs, state labor officials reported Friday, but it remained unclear whether that signaled a protracted slowdown in the job market.

“There is definitely more weakness in job growth for the Bay Area,” said Jordan Levine, an economist with Beacon Economics. “More head winds are hitting the economy this year that we didn’t have last year.”

Even before the latest numbers, job growth in the region had been losing steam. In the first seven months of this year, the Bay Area gained 19,000 jobs, an average of 2,700 a month, while over the same seven-month period last year, it gained nearly 70,000 jobs, an average of almost 10,000 a month.

“The global growth environment has been poor, you have more weakness in China, India and Brazil, and those areas buy a lot of technology products from the United States,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist with San Francisco-based Bank of the West.

Government fiscal policies have also had a dampening effect on the region’s job growth, according to Levine. “You had an increase in payroll taxes with the end of the national payroll tax holiday, you had sequestration for the federal government,” he said.

In July, Santa Clara County lost 4,000 jobs and the East Bay shed 3,500 jobs, while the San Francisco-San Mateo-Marin region added 2,300 jobs, the state’s Employment Development Department said. All the numbers were adjusted for seasonal factors.

Steve Levy, director of the Palo Alto-based Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy, said the slowdown of job growth in recent months was to be expected and not necessarily a cause for alarm.

“We had annual job growth of more than 3 percent a year and that wasn’t sustainable,” he said, adding: “Nothing suggests we are going to slow down or fall off a cliff.”

Levy said the Bay Area’s job growth is now in the 2 percent range on an annual basis.

Jeffrey Michael, director of the Stockton-based Business Forecasting Center at University of the Pacific, agreed that the slowdown in job growth in recent months does not signal a pronounced downturn of the local economy.

“The South Bay and the San Francisco area have rebounded from the recession, so now they are moving out of a stage of very rapid growth to a more stable pattern,” he said.

The high-tech sector in both the South Bay and San Francisco area held its own despite the overall slump in the Bay Area, according to an analysis by Beacon Economics of the EDD report.

Santa Clara County gained 100 professional, scientific and technical jobs in July, while San Francisco added 1,500. The East Bay lost 1,700 professional, scientific and technical jobs last month, the Beacon analysis shows.

“Technology still looks strong,” said Jon Haveman, chief economist with Marin Consulting. “The core strength of the Bay Area is still in place.”

The major job losses for Santa Clara County in July were in manufacturing, which lost 1,800 jobs; the leisure, hotel and restaurant sector, which shed 1,400 jobs; government, which lost 1,200 jobs; and retail, which shed 700 jobs.

The East Bay’s big losses were in construction, which lost 1,700 jobs; professional, scientific and technical services, down 1,700; and the leisure, hotel and restaurant sector, down 900 jobs.

While the Bay Area has consistently led the state in job growth over the past two years, their roles reversed in July, when California added 38,100 jobs.

“The job losses are striking in the Bay Area, because it is rare for the area to lose jobs when the state is adding jobs,” said Michael Bernick, a research fellow with the Milken Institute and a former director of the EDD.

Despite the state’s job growth, the statewide unemployment rate worsened to 8.7 percent in July, up from 8.5 percent in June. The jobless rate can increase at the same time the number of jobs increases because the unemployment rate is derived from a survey of households, while job growth is based on a survey of employers.

July jobless rates also rose in the Bay Area, Beacon reported. The South Bay posted a 6.9 percent jobless rate, up from 6.7 percent in June, and the East Bay’s unemployment rate was 7.3 percent, up from 7.1 percent. The San Francisco-San Mateo-Marin region had a jobless rate of 5.5 percent in July, up from 5.4 percent the prior month.

Contact George Avalos at 408-859-5167 or 408-373-3556. Follow him at Twitter.com/georgeavalos.