Washington ? The U.S. economy added jobs in September for the first time in eight months, the Labor Department reported Friday, raising hopes on Wall Street and in the White House that a long-awaited rebound in employment may be getting under way.

Stocks rallied on the unexpected good news, though economic analysts cautioned it would take a few more months to determine whether the economy is really on the mend.

The economy grew by 57,000 jobs in September, the Labor Department said, after shrinking by 551,000 jobs over the previous seven months. The modest rise wasn’t enough to bring down the unemployment rate, which remained at 6.1 percent.

“This report offers evidence of some stabilization in the labor market front, but it is way too premature to conclude from the details that we have fully turned the corner,” said David Rosenberg, chief North American economist for Merrill Lynch.

Many analysts had been expecting job growth to pick up toward the end of this year and into 2004. The economy perked up last spring and appears to have gained further momentum in the summer. That growth should translate into more jobs.

The question is whether the growth will last. The economy is benefiting from two one-time boosts: more government spending for the war in Iraq in the spring and a new round of income tax cuts that took effect in the summer. When the effect of those boosts fades, as it inevitably will, the recovery could peter out.

“Once the tax cuts are in and the spending is in, where’s the next act?” asked David Wyss, chief economist at Standard and Poor’s bond rating agency in New York.

The stakes are high, not only economically but also politically. Democrats are attacking President Bush for his stewardship of the economy, a concern that recent polls suggest is more important to voters than the war in Iraq. How the economy performs over the next 12 months could make or break Bush’s prospects for a second term.

A key political issue is the dramatic loss of manufacturing jobs, the hardest-hit sector in this slow economy. Factory jobs fell by another 29,000 in September, though that was a smaller drop than the average loss in previous months. The gains were mostly in construction and the services sector, with some improvements in health care, transportation, warehousing and financial services.

Bush made the most of the good news Friday in a speech in Milwaukee.

“Things are getting better,” he assured an audience of small-business owners. “But there’s still work to do. A lot of Wisconsin manufacturers (are) hurt. It’s tough sledding, tough times, and I understand that. We’ve got manufacturers in a lot of parts of our country that are lagging the rest of the economic vitality.”

Stocks soared on the jobs report, though they retreated late in the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 84.51 points, at 9,572.31. The broader S&P 500 index rose 9.61 points to 1,029.85. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index gained 44.35 points to close at 1,880.57.