UK August remaining providers PMI 53.7 vs 53.3 prelim

• Final Services PMI 53.7 vs. 53.3 expected and 52.5 prior.
• Final Composite PMI 53.8 vs. 53.4 expected and 52.8 prior.

Key findings:

• Business activity growth accelerates again.
• Robust rise in new work led by improving
  domestic demand.
• Slowest rate of prices charged inflation for three-
  and-a-half years.

Comment:

Tim Moore, Economics Director at S&P Global Market
Intelligence

“August data highlighted a recovery in UK service sector
performance as improving economic conditions and
domestic political stability helped to bolster customer
demand. New business again increased at a robust pace
after a lull in decision-making earlier this summer.

This
fuelled the fastest upturn in service sector activity since
April and extended the current period of growth to ten
months.
Service providers responded to the upturn in business
conditions by hiring additional staff in August.

Job creation
remained faster than seen on average in the first half of
2024, despite headwinds from scarce candidate availability
and elevated wage pressures.
Higher salary payments resulted in another sharp rise
in cost burdens across the service economy.

However,
the overall rate of input price inflation resumed its recent
descent in August and reached its lowest since January
2021. Adding to meaningful signs of softer inflationary
pressures in the service sector, the latest survey indicated
that average prices charged increased at the weakest pace
for three-and-a-half years.

The modest post-election bounce in business activity
expectations faded, however, in August. Hopes of interest
rate cuts and steady improvements in broader economic
conditions helped to support confidence, but some firms
cited concerns about policy uncertainty in the run up to the
Autumn Budget.”