Index of Services, UK: May 2025

• Monthly services output was estimated to have grown by 0.1% in May 2025; this follows a fall of 0.3% in April 2025 and a rise of 0.4% in March 2025.

• There were monthly increases in 10 of the 14 sectors in May 2025; the largest positive contribution came from "information and communication" (up 2.0%).

• The monthly increase in output was partially offset by monthly decreases in 4 of the 14 sectors in May 2025; the largest negative contribution came from "wholesale and retail activities" (down 1.5%).

• The two industries that mainly contributed to the monthly rise in May 2025 were "legal services" (up 6.1%) and "computer programming, consultancy and related activities" (up 3.0%); the main offsetting negative contribution at an industry level was in "retail trade" (down 2.7%).

• Services output growth in the three months to May 2025 was estimated to have increased (up 0.4%), when compared with the three months to February 2025.

• In the three months to May 2025, 8 of the 14 sectors showed growth with the main positive contributing sector being "administrative and support service activities" (up 3.2%).

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

Response rates for May 2025

The response rates for May 2025 were 72.4% based on forms returned. This accounted for 86.9% 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: May 2025 bulletin, published on 20 June 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 gross value added (GVA) 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 

In line with the National Accounts Revisions Policy, this release gives data for May 2025 for the first time, with April 2025 open for revision.

We have also included revisions to the monthly data from January 2025 to March 2025 as a result of revisions incorporated in the GDP quarterly national accounts, UK: January to March 2025 published on 30 June 2025.

Pausing of Producer Prices publications

Business prices data with corrected chain linking methods have been used in this release for producer price indices (PPI), import prices indices (IPI) and export price indices (EPI). These data have now been used from January 2025 onwards in the monthly GDP dataset.

Corrected service producer price indices (SPPI) have not been included. Further analysis will be made on the corrected SPPI dataset. We intend to include this in our GDP monthly estimate, UK: June 2025 bulletin, and in our GDP first quarterly estimate, UK: April to June 2025 bulletin, publishing on 14 August.

The full implementation of updated business prices data will be managed in line with the national accounts revisions policy, with the full time series update being included in our GDP quarterly national accounts, UK: April to June 2025 bulletin on 30 September 2025, and in our Blue Book 2025 release.

Further information on the chain linking error in the producer prices dataset are detailed in our Methods update for Producer Price Indices (PPI) and Service Produce Prices Indices (SPPI) published on 10 July 2025.

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, 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 article published on 9 May 2025.