Index of Services, UK: March 2025

• Services output growth during Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025 was estimated to have increased (up 0.7%), compared with Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2024.

• There was growth in 10 of the 14 sectors in Quarter 1 2025; the main positive contributing sectors were "administrative and support service activities" (up 3.3%), "wholesale and retail activities" (up 1.6%), and "information and communication" (up 1.9%).

• Monthly services output was estimated to have grown for the fifth consecutive month, with an increase of 0.4% in March 2025; this follows increases in both January 2025 and February 2025, of 0.1% and 0.3%, respectively.

• There were monthly increases in 8 of the 14 sectors in March 2025; the largest positive contribution came from "wholesale and retail activities" (up 0.9%).

• The monthly increase in output was partially offset by monthly decreases in 3 of the 14 sectors in March 2025; the largest negative contribution came from "administrative and support service activities" (down 0.5%).

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

Response rates for March 2025

The response rates for March 2025 were 69.9% based on forms returned. This accounted for 83.8% 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.

Data relating to the retail industry are broadly comparable with our Retail sales, Great Britain: March 2025 bulletin published on 25 April 2025.

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 GVA weight. More information on the data that underpin these statistics, including our GDP(o) data sources catalogue, is found on our IoS methods and sources pages.

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 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 

In line with the National Accounts Revision Policy, this release gives data for March 2025, with January and February 2025 also open for revision.

Pausing of Producer Prices publications

Our producer prices publications are currently paused, as described in our update published on 11 April 2025. Our quality assurance identified a problem with the chain-linking methods used to calculate the Producer Price Index (PPI) and Services Producer Price Indices (SPPI) during work to improve the systems used to create the PPI and SPPI indices.

Our investigations so far have concluded the problem affects the period from December 2008 onwards. However, investigations suggest that the main effect on annual producer price inflation rates was in 2022 and 2023, because of the large movements in relative prices during that period.

These detailed price data are used within IoS gross domestic product (GDP) calculations. This may lead to effects on the level of some industries. Revisions to estimates are likely in 2022 and 2023. At an aggregate level for GDP, these revisions should be offsetting to an extent, while taken alongside regular data deliveries. Early indications suggest that there will not be a notable change in the recent economic trends seen in these data, but we will update users once more information becomes available. We do not plan any changes to the publication timetable for IoS. We will continue to use PPI and SPPI estimates compiled under the current methodology in these publications until updated methods and data are available.

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.

We use 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, residual seasonality checks are regularly completed by our time series analysis team on both the directly seasonally adjusted series and also the indirectly derived aggregate time series.

This topic is explored further in our Assessing residual seasonality in published outputs methodology published 9 May 2025.