This little snippet of information just rose to the top of Yahoo! News:
The nation's service sector contracted in January for the first time in almost five years, a trade group of purchasing executives said Tuesday.
This little story is destined to disappear into the ether, I'm sure, snuffed out like a brief candle by primary news.
I'm not an economist, so I can't give this piece of information the full bonddad treatment, but it sounds kind of, well, ominous:
The consensus among survey respondents was that the services sector — which includes industries such as restaurants, banking, construction, retailing and travel — has "come to the end of a long-term period of growth,"
...especially given how often we hear about the contraction of the manufacturing and IT sectors (the good jobs) and that the growth of the service sector (low-paying jobs) is keeping the unemployment rate relatively steady. The "end of a long-term period of growth" does not sound like a mere statistical bobble or a January anomaly.
ISM said only three service industries reported growth, while 14 showed contraction.