What towatch

Keep an eye on January manufacturing numbers

The January employment report, out next Friday, is expected to record a solid 170,000 or so job gains, below monthly averages of 180,000 last year and 229,000 in 2015. The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 4.7%, close to its nine- year low.

Payroll gains are slowing as falling unemployment provides firms a smaller pool of available workers. But the increases are still more than enough to bring down the jobless rate.

Two sectors, however, are worth watching: manufacturing and mining and logging. Crude mounted a partial rebound in 2016, coaxing producers to revive shuttered wells and temper layoffs. Mining and logging employment has been roughly stable since June.

Manufacturers, meanwhile, are linked closely to the oil industry. Resuscitation of drilling means producers are again ordering steel pipes and other equipment. Manufacturing employment increased by 17,000 in December after declining fairly steadily since mid- 2015.

While oil and manufacturing payrolls make up just 9% of total employment, growth there can have an outsized ripple effect on the broader service sector.