To the extent markets needed an “offset” for a hot NFP print and a commensurately warm read on US wage growth, a lackluster update on services sector activity obliged.

ISM services came in at just 50.6 for December in the last of this week’s top-tier data releases out of the world’s largest economy.

That was below every estimate from 52 people who waste their lives for a living. The range of guesses, from 52 economists, was 50.7 to 54.

The final read on S&P Global’s US services index for December was 51.4, a tick higher than the flash estimate and up from November. Frankly, that doesn’t matter in the long shadow of the second-weakest ISM services headline in a year.

“The services sector had a pullback in the rate of growth in December, attributed to the decrease in the rate of growth for new orders and contraction in employment,” ISM’s Anthony Nieves said Friday, adding that “there are concerns related to economic uncertainty, geopolitical events and labor constraints.”

Although the underlying business activity index rose to 56.6, new orders dropped meaningfully and the employment index tumbled to 43.3.

That right there, folks, is a canary. Or it sure as hell looks like one to me, with allowances for the fact that I see a lot of ostensible dead canaries which later turn out to be… I don’t know, something yellow and motionless that looks like, but isn’t, a dead canary.

The month-to-month decline on the ISM services employment gauge was very pronounced, at 7.4 points. It’d be an exaggeration (and not a small one) to say that drop somehow rendered the NFP beat irrelevant. But considering all the caveats that accompanied the December jobs report, it’d be fair to at least suggest that the balance of evidence from Friday’s data actually skewed more towards economic deceleration than any generic “resilience” narrative.

And yet, I’m compelled to note that the anecdotes from ISM panelists came across as generally constructive. Upbeat, even. And, again, the business activity gauge (i.e., the underlying activity gauge, not the ISM headline) was robust. So a Wile E. Coyote moment doesn’t seem imminent.

If all of the above sounds like a lot of doublespeak, and if that’s frustrating to you, just imagine how I feel writing it. Hence my wholly sarcastic (and, I think, funny) title choice.

Apropos of ambiguity, S&P Global’s Chris Williamson said his firm’s service sector gauge for the US provided “some New Year cheer.” Still, he described a “more challenging demand environment” (bad news) which “has dampened firms’ pricing power” (bad news for companies) which is “squeezing service sector selling price inflation to the lowest for over three years” (good news for consumers and the Fed).

So, what’s the overarching takeaway? “Who knows.(?)” That’s the answer. It’s also a question. And the answer to that question is “Nobody.”