The health and education sectors are among the economy’s most potent job creators.

Before this month’s stall, wage growth over all had been picking up, putting more money in consumers’ pockets. As long as Americans continue to spend, the economy will keep humming.

But economic confidence can be fickle. Worries about tariffs and the general direction of the economy are spooking those outside the manufacturing sector, according to the Institute for Supply Management, which conducted the survey of service businesses.

The dissonant economic cues are pulling some employers in different directions.

“What I’m hearing is different from what I’m seeing,” said Tom Gimbel , chief executive of LaSalle Network, a staffing firm in Chicago. With so much uncertainty, some chief executives say they are afraid of having too much capital invested in their business.

“But what I’m seeing is that people are still hiring,” he said. His firm’s revenue, he said, is up 15 percent from last year, and placements are up 8 percent.

Hiring in professional and business services has kept pumping jobs into the economy at a steady rate, averaging 35,000 a month since the start of the year.

The global accounting firm EY, formerly Ernst & Young, plans to hire 15,000 workers by the end of June, said Dan Black , global recruiting leader. “There’s a lot of signals of a slowdown,” he said, “but we continue to be very bullish on hiring here.”

“No matter what the economy is doing,” he added, “you still need your taxes done, and you still need your books audited.”