Index of Services, UK: May 2026

• Services output in the three months to May 2026 was estimated to have increased by 0.7% compared with the three months to February 2026; this follows 0.9% growth in the three months to April 2026.

• 12 of the 14 sectors saw a rise in the three months to May 2026, with the main positive contributing sectors being "information and communication" (up 2.5%), and "professional, scientific and technical activities" (up 1.8%).

• There was a fall in the remaining 2 sectors, with the largest being "administrative and support service activities" (down 1.1%).

• Monthly services output was estimated to have increased by 0.3% in May 2026; this follows a small fall in April 2026 (down 0.1%), and a rise in March 2026 (up 0.3%).

• There were monthly increases in 7 of the 14 sectors in May 2026; the largest positive contribution on the month came from "professional, scientific and technical activities" (up 1.8%).

• There were monthly decreases in 6 of the 14 sectors (1 industry saw no growth) in May 2026, with "information and communication" (down 0.5%) providing the largest negative contributions.

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

Response rates for May 2026 

The response rates for May 2026 were 74.2% based on forms returned. This accounted for 88.2% of total turnover coverage of the sample population. For further information, see our Current and historical Monthly Business Survey (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) Monthly Business Survey (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 our IoS bulletins and datasets are estimates that are subject to uncertainty, for example, sampling variability and non-sampling error. For more information, 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 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 Services

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 IoS publication, on 13 August 2026, we will open for revision back to April 2026. Please see our National Accounts Revisions Policy: updated January 2026 for further details.

Table 1 shows the revisions from the current release against the previous IoS release (April 2026), published on 12 June 2026.

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.

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, 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 IoS 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 non-seasonally adjusted chained volume measure 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.