Index of Services, UK: December 2025

• Services output for Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2025 was estimated to have no growth (0.0%) compared with Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2025.

• In Quarter 4 2025, 8 of the 14 sectors saw a rise with “administrative and support service activities” (up 1.2%) providing the largest positive contribution.

• In Quarter 4 2025, 4 of the 14 sectors saw a fall (2 sectors saw no growth 0.0%), with “professional, scientific and technical activities” (down 1.1%), providing the largest negative contribution.

• Monthly services output was estimated to have increased by 0.3% in December 2025; this follows an increase of 0.1% in November 2025 and a fall of 0.3% in October 2025.

• There were monthly increases in 8 of the 14 sectors in December 2025; the largest positive contributions on the month came from “transportation and storage” (up 2.0%) and “administrative and support service activities” (up 1.4%).

• There were monthly decreases in 5 of the 14 sectors (1 sector saw no growth (0.0%)) in December 2025; the three main contributing sectors all experienced similar negative contribution, “information and communication” (down 0.5%), “human health and social work activities” (down 0.4%), and “arts, entertainment and recreation” (down 1.9%).

• Annual services output increased by 1.4% in 2025, with growth shown across 13 of the 14 sectors, most notably from, “information and communication” (up 4.5%) and “human health and social work activities” (up 3.0%).

All data related to the Index of Services are available on our Related data page.

Response rates for December 2025

The response rates for December 2025 were 70.6 % based on forms returned. This accounted for 85.5% of total turnover coverage of the sample population. For further information, see our Current and historical Monthly Business Survey (MBS) (services) response rates dataset.

Data sources and collection

The Index of Services (IoS) is compiled using data from several different sources (share of overall economy based on latest gross value added (GVA) weights). These include the:

• Office for National Statistics (ONS) MBS (34.9%)    

• ONS Retail Sales Inquiry (4.8%)    

• ONS Government Expenditure (15.3%)    

• ONS Households’ Expenditure (11.2%)    

• ONS Finance Expenditure (8.0%)    

• ONS Households and non-profit institutions serving households (1.9%)

• Other (3.6%)

The MBS data are published alongside this release in our MBS turnover of services industries dataset.

For further information on what is included within “other”, please see our Gross domestic product (GDP(o)) data sources catalogue.

The percentage of each data source is based on their gross value added weight. Our IoS methods and sources pages provide more information on the data that underpin these statistics; of particular note is our GDP(o) data sources catalogue.

Value Added Tax (VAT) data are also included for small and medium-sized businesses to help inform estimates. For more information, see our VAT turnover data in National Accounts: background and methodology.

Quality and methodology

The data reported in IoS bulletins and datasets are estimates that are subject to uncertainty, for example, sampling variability and non-sampling error. For more information on these, see Section 2 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 Index of Services Quality and Methodology Information.

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 Services

This release gives data for December 2025 for the first time, with January 2025 to November 2025 open for revision because of late and updated source data since our last publication on 15 January 2026.

Revisions have been made across 2025 to the retail trade, except of motor vehicles and motorcycles because of updated returns to the Retail Sales Index (RSI) survey. These revisions are discussed in more detail in our Retail sales December bulletin, published on 23 January 2026.

There are also revisions across 2025 because of updated seasonal adjustment factors in non-market education. The revisions to RSI and education were largest in the three months to September and largely offset each other.

The downwards revision to services in November was largely the result of revisions to professional, scientific and technical activities. The largest negative contribution to revisions came from scientific research and development where there were updated survey data and improvements to the seasonal adjustment factor.

In our next monthly IoS publication on 13 March 2026, we will exceptionally be revising data from January 2024 to December 2025 in order to bring through updates to non-market education and retail trade, excluding motor vehicles and trailers. These will also be incorporated into the Quarterly National Accounts being published on 31 March 2026 where there will be revisions from January 2024.

Seasonal adjustment

The monthly estimates of IoS 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.

IoS 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.

The ONS uses the X-13-ARIMA-SEATS approach to seasonal adjustment. Seasonal adjustment parameters are monitored closely and regularly reviewed. For more information, please see our seasonal adjustment methodology page.

In our IoS estimates, seasonal adjustment is applied at the industry level, and the seasonally adjusted series are aggregated to create estimates by sector and total IoS output. As part of our quality assurance approach, our time series analysis team regularly completes checks on both the directly seasonally adjusted series and also the indirectly derived aggregate time series, as explained in our Assessing residual seasonality in published outputs methodology.

This topic is explored further in our Assessing residual seasonality in published outputs article, updated on 30 September 2025.