The most heartening employment report since last summer suggested on Friday that a recovery was under way  and perhaps gathering steam  despite the reluctance of the nation’s businesses to resume hiring or even stop shedding jobs.

Employers eliminated 247,000 jobs in July, a huge number by the standards of an ordinary recession, but the smallest monthly loss since last August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. And the unemployment rate, rising for months, actually ticked down, to 9.4 percent from 9.5 percent in June, mainly because so many people dropped out of the hunt for work, ceasing to list themselves as unemployed.

“Employers are no longer in a panic,” said Ian C. Shepherdson, chief domestic economist for High Frequency Economics. “The pressure they felt to get rid of workers in a hurry is diminishing. What we don’t see yet is enough momentum in the economy to convince companies to hire again.”

Obama administration officials credited the stimulus package, enacted in February, for the continuing improvement, from a peak of 741,000 jobs lost in January. Some said the July loss would have been closer to 500,000 without the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The president, appearing briefly in the White House Rose Garden, said his administration had “rescued our economy from catastrophe.”