It’s the most important economic data release in any given month, and today’s jobs report takes on added importance since a string of data hints at an economy at the end of the business cycle that’s lurching into a recession.

This week, we got some troubling news on employment from the Institute for Supply Management (manufacturing and non-manufacturing).  The decline in manufacturing is getting even uglier and direr, in part to the global economy, and strong dollar, but it’s overwhelmingly from poor policies that compound poor trade deals.

Service jobs cut a wide swath of industries and occupations; skewed often by low-paying restaurant and retail jobs.  Critics deride these as ‘burger-flipping’ jobs, but they serve a role in an economy that’s operating on all cylinders.  Perhaps we could be approaching a point where their importance is a moot point.

In the Challenger, Gray & Christmas Job-Cut Report-retail and energy lead the way… overall announcements are surging to 75,114 from 53,041 from a year earlier.

Today’s job report follows an impressive December with 292,000 new jobs created.  Last year was largely a dud; the last two months saw a spike in jobs that hints at wage gains to follow.

• First Two Months of 2016 average monthly job gain of 200,000
• Last Three Months of 2015 average monthly job gain of 284,000

Last month saw outsized job gains in key sectors, including construction, information, professional and business services, education, and government.  Despite gains in higher paying industries; overall, wages declined by a penny.

Although it’s really a lagging indicator, the trends from the JOLTS report on hiring, firing, and quitting points to greater employment and wage gains.

Finally, there are job openings online; it increased from 13,500 to 5,496,000, which is woefully less than the 7.9 million officially unemployed folks in America.

Once again, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is approaching that key resistance point –the index is down 1,000 points this year.  It’s going to take a jobs miss-and-wage gain combo to push it through today.

Today’s Session

The jobs report came in largely as I expected with a miss on total jobs but higher wages. I thought that would be the one-two punch to put to bed the notion of four Fed rate hikes.  But guys with bigger soapboxes are actually talking up the report as if it was Reaganesque - it was 151,000 jobs that will be revised much lower.

I'm intrigued by manufacturing and construction, even if the former had a jobs number that seems to be pure fantasy, if there is a modicum of truth, then the rebound on names like CAT might speak to the markets old-school role as a harbinger of things to come. It’s those blue chip names that should continue to be de facto save havens and more.

On that note, tech stocks looking to take it on the jaw again.  That hot money crowd fleeing like rats from a sinking ship (and the removal of their weight hastens the sinking).