WASHINGTON — Years of steady job gains have finally begun to benefit a wider range of Americans, including those in lower-paying jobs.

A second straight month of robust hiring — 255,000 jobs added in July — pointed to employer confidence that suggested that the economy is powering through a slump that struck early this year. The unemployment rate remained a low 4.9 percent, the Labor Department said Friday.

U.S. stocks jumped to record highs Friday after the strong jobs report gave investors more confidence that the economy is still growing. Financial and technology stocks soared and investors sold the safe assets they have favored for most of this year.

The 255,000 added jobs was far more than investors expected and the second straight month of strong gains. Stocks made their biggest gain in almost a month. Banks traded higher as investors anticipated higher interest rates and bigger profits on mortgages and other loans. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 1 percent, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index and the Nasdaq composite both set record highs.

“It looks like the economy is improving, it looks like corporate earnings are on the upswing,” said Sam Stovall, U.S. equity strategist for S&P Capital IQ.

Hiring has been solid for six years, but for most of that time there were caveats: Average hourly pay was stagnant. And millions were no longer either working or looking for work, leaving a smaller proportion of adults in the labor force.

Evidence is emerging that those long-running weak spots are finally improving. Many businesses are offering higher pay to attract workers as competition to fill jobs heats up. Average pay is up 2.6 percent from a year ago — matching the best 12-month gain since the Great Recession ended in 2009 and comfortably above inflation of just 1 percent.

The resilient job market is encouraging more Americans to begin looking for a job — a key trend that helps offset a drag from the growing retirements of aging baby boomers.

Taken together, the two trends suggest that the economic recovery, now seven years old, is finally benefiting a broad spectrum of the population. Economists at Goldman Sachs have found that pay for workers earning less than $12.50 an hour has risen 4 percent in the past year, more than for any other income group. Those earning from $12.50 to $20 an hour have received the next-biggest increase, at just above 3 percent.

“Wage growth figures indicate that the tide is turning,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and president of the conservative American Action Forum.

The jobs report also suggested that employers were unfazed by either Britain's late-June vote to quit the European Union or the U.S. economy's tepid growth in the first half of the year. Most analysts expect the solid hiring to help fuel an economic rebound in the second half of this year.