BRUSSELS — Stocks rebounded Friday as investors breathed a sigh of relief at the news that the U.S. added more jobs than expected during July, putting a halt to one of the worst selloffs since the height of the 2008 financial crisis.

The monthly U.S. jobs data, which often set the market tone for a week or two after their release, were keenly awaited after Thursday’s rout, when stocks suffered one of their worst days since the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008.

In the run-up to the release, there were fears that the figures may have added to growing market fears that the world’s largest economy was heading back into recession.

But their release has assuaged those fears somewhat though not necessarily eased worries of the pace of the U.S. recovery.

The U.S. government reported that some 117,000 jobs were added in July and that the unemployment rate inched down to 9.1 percent from 9.2 percent in June. Neither of these numbers showed an economy in full bloom, but compared with a dismal job market in June and expectations of 85,000 new jobs.

Almost immediately, Wall Street futures turned around, helping ease the pressure on European markets, which have been additionally weighed down by worries over the debt situation of Italy and France,

“The headline surprise, compounded by upward revisions and an unexpected drop in the unemployment rate help to diffuse some of the severe pessimism over the outlook for the U.S. economy that has set in over the past two weeks,” said Michael Woolfolk, an analyst at Bank of New York Mellon.

In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average was trading 1.3 percent higher at 11,530 while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 1.2 percent to 1,215.

In Europe, France’s CAC-40 gained 1.5 percent to 3,369, while U.K. and Germany markets retraced most of their morning losses. The FTSE 100 was down 0.7 percent at 5,354 and the DAX was 0.4 percent lower at 6,392.

The stock markets in Italy and Spain — the two countries that had become the focus of investors’ debt fears in recent weeks — were among Friday’s best performers, adding 1.9 percent each.

The bond market pressure on the two countries also eased through the day after briefly flirting with euro-era highs.

The yield, or interest rate, on Spanish and Italian bonds declined, but remained at levels that are deemed unsustainable in the long-term. The yield on Italian 10-year bonds was at 6.16 percent, higher than the 6.05 percent demanded for their Spanish equivalents for the first time since May 2010.

Eurozone leaders’ reluctance to increase the size of their bailout fund and quickly implement changes to its powers, such as giving it the ability to buy up government bonds, have left the currency union without a clear defense against market troubles over the summer.