The nation’s unemployment rate dipped in July for the first time in 15 months, the Labor Department reported Friday, offering slight signs that the recession’s end is nearing.

The department said the jobless rate fell to 9.4 percent, a dip of 0.1 point from June. Employers slowed the pace of layoffs, cutting 247,000 jobs, less than June’s 443,000.

The job news for older workers improved as well. The Labor Department said the unemployment rate for people 55 or older dipped to 6.7 percent in July, from 7 percent in June. It was 3.1 percent when the recession began in December 2007. The department said it was also taking people ages 55 to 64 slightly less time to find a new job in July compared with June—28.5 weeks rather than 30.3 weeks.

Improvement since this spring in the housing market, the manufacturing sector and business spending has sparked a stock-market rally and bolstered hopes that the overall economy will return to a state of growth this year. But full economic recovery requires a healthy job market so consumers have money to spend.

Friday’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics contained some other hopeful economic signs. While job losses continued in July, people who did have jobs worked a slightly longer workweek. Their average weekly earnings also rose slightly.

Still, it may be months before a strengthening economy produces a net gain in jobs. The Federal Reserve and private economists have been predicting that the jobless rate will rise to double digits this year and peak in mid-2010. That was the pattern in the last two recessions, when the unemployment rate rose for months after the economy began growing again.

With July’s layoffs, the number of unemployed people reached 14.5 million, up from 8.9 million a year earlier. The unemployment rate declined even as more layoffs were reported partly because its calculation does not include a growing number of “discouraged workers” who have stopped actively looking for jobs.

Art Dalglish is an editor at the AARP Bulletin.