Index of Production, UK: May 2026

• Production output was estimated to have increased by 0.1% during the three months to May 2026, compared with the three months to February 2026; this is the sixth consecutive rise in three-monthly growth since November 2025 (down 0.5%).

• Of the four main sectors, the only positive contribution came from "manufacturing" (up 1.6%), in the three months to May 2026; this was partially offset by falls from "electricity and gas" (down 4.3%) which is the strongest three-monthly decline since June 2025 (down 5.0%), "water supply and sewerage" (down 1.9%), and "mining and quarrying" (down 1.5%).

• Output in 8 of the 13 subsectors in "manufacturing" increased during the three months to May 2026, with the largest positive contributions coming from "basic pharmaceutical products" (up 5.4%), "basic metals and metal products" (up 2.7%), and "food products, beverages and tobacco" (up 1.7%).

• Monthly production output was estimated to have decreased by 0.5% in May 2026; this follows a rise in April 2026 (up 0.2%) and no growth in March 2026 (0.0%).

• Monthly production saw falls from "mining and quarrying" (down 4.6%), "water supply and sewerage" (down 2.4%) and "electricity and gas" (down 0.1%); this was minimally offset by a rise from "manufacturing" (up 0.1%).

• Within "mining and quarrying" the monthly fall in May 2026 mainly came from "extraction of crude petroleum and natural gas" (down 4.8%); meaning that output for this industry was at its lowest level since monthly data began in 1990.

• 7 of the 13 manufacturing subsectors saw increased output in May 2026, with the largest positive contribution from "machinery and equipment" (up 5.3%); this was largely offset by the largest negative contribution from "basic metals and metal products" (down 2.7%).

All data related to the Index of Production (IoP) are available on our Related data page.

The Index of Production (IoP) uses data from a variety of sources. It is calculated by taking turnover and removing the effect of price changes, or by using direct volume estimates.

Most of these data are collected as "turnover values" through the Monthly Business Survey (MBS). Direct volume series are also collected by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), and the International Steel Statistics Bureau (ISSB) for steel industries.

The MBS is fully online. Business owners can log in from any location and submit their data at an appropriate time.

Value Added Tax (VAT) data have also been included for 64 production industries for small and medium-sized businesses from January 2018. More information is available in our VAT turnover data in National Accounts: background and methodology.

A comprehensive list of the IoP source data can be found in our Gross domestic product (GDP) data sources catalogue.

Response rates for May 2026 

MBS response rates were 77.8% for May 2026, based on forms returned. This accounted for 90.3% of total turnover coverage of the sample population. Further information is available in our MBS (production) response rates dataset.

Quality and methodology

The data reported in our IoP bulletins and datasets are estimates that are subject to uncertainty, such as sampling variability and non-sampling error. More information is available in Section 2: Sampling the population of our Uncertainty and how we measure it for our surveys methodology.

More quality and methodology information (QMI) on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our IoP, UK QMI.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in April 2014. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics, and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".

Revisions to Index of Production

This release gives data for May 2026 for the first time. We are open to revisions from January 2024. This includes the revisions published in our GDP quarterly national accounts, UK: January to March 2026 bulletin, as well as further revisions because of improved seasonal adjustment and data sources.

In our next IoP bulletin, publishing on 13 August 2026, we will open for revision back to April 2026. Further details are available in our National Accounts Revisions Policy: updated January 2026.

Seasonal adjustment

Our IoP monthly estimates are seasonally adjusted. Seasonal adjustment is the process of removing the variations associated with the time of year, or the arrangement of the calendar, from a data time series.

IoP estimates, as for many data time series, are difficult to analyse using raw data because seasonal effects dominate short-term movements. Identifying and removing the seasonal component leaves the trend and irregular components.

We use the X-13-ARIMA-SEATS approach to seasonal adjustment. Seasonal adjustment parameters are monitored closely and are regularly reviewed. More information is available in our Seasonal adjustment methodology.

In our IoP estimates, seasonal adjustment is applied at the industry level. The seasonally adjusted series are aggregated to create estimates by sector and total IoP output. As part of our quality assurance approach, residual seasonality checks are regularly completed by our Time Series Analysis team, on both the directly seasonally adjusted series and the indirectly derived aggregate time series.

Based on our quality assurance as part of this publication, there is no statistically significant residual seasonality in our aggregate estimates for IoP in the period from January 1997 to May 2026.

This topic is explored further in our How the ONS assesses statistical outputs for residual seasonality methodology, published on 12 May 2026. 

Since May 2026, we have published our non-seasonally adjusted chained volume measure time series in our updated Monthly GDP low level industry dataset. There are conceptual differences between indirect and direct seasonal adjustment. Indirect seasonal adjustment is the sum of the directly seasonally adjusted component series, typically chosen at an optimal level and depending on user needs. For the National Accounts, GDP aggregates are created with indirect seasonal adjustment.

Because of processing, including benchmarking and chain-linking, direct seasonal adjustment of the non-seasonally adjusted GDP aggregate will not give the same results as the indirect seasonally adjusted output.