The most hopeful jobs report since last summer suggested Friday that the recession was ending, but the recovery will be marked by a still-rising unemployment rate and tens of thousands of job losses each month until next year. The American economy shed 247,000 jobs last month, the smallest monthly toll since last August, the government reported on Friday. While businesses are expected to keep cutting positions through the rest of the year, the Labor Department’s latest figures offered hopeful signs for the American worker and a measure of relief to the Obama administration, which has faced rising criticism as unemployment blew past its earlier projections. “The trend lines are positive,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “We are going from massive job losses to just big job losses on our way to a stable job market, I think by next spring.” The length of the workweek increased, albeit slightly, for the first time since August, a sign that businesses were not scali