Nonfarm payroll employment declined by 247,000 jobs last month, while the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4 percent - a 0.1 percent decline from last month's 26-year high of 9.5 percent.

Among the major industry sectors, the only area to see job growth was the healthcare industry, which added 20,000 jobs last month. The most hard-hit sectors were construction, manufacturing and retail.

However, the average monthly job losses for recent months showed significant improvement from earlier in the year - the 331,000 jobs lost on average between May and July was approximately half the jobs lost on average between November and April.

Furthermore, the unemployment totals for May and June were both downwardly revised.

The Bureau of Labor announcement follows earlier small business finance news from Automatic Data Processing, which reported that there were 371,000 jobs lost in July.