{"id":427910,"date":"2026-03-04T16:40:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T09:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/03\/uk-february-final-services-pmi-53-9-vs-53-9-prelim\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T16:40:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T09:40:24","slug":"uk-february-final-services-pmi-53-9-vs-53-9-prelim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/2026\/03\/uk-february-final-services-pmi-53-9-vs-53-9-prelim\/","title":{"rendered":"UK February final services PMI 53.9 vs 53.9 prelim"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Prior 54.0<\/li>\n<li>Final Composite PMI 53.7 vs 53.9 prelim<\/li>\n<li>Prior 53.7<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Key findings:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Business activity rises for tenth month running in<br \/>\nFebruary\n<\/li>\n<li>New order growth loses momentum\n<\/li>\n<li>Job cuts persist amid pressure on margins from<br \/>\nrising costs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Comment:<\/p>\n<p>Tim Moore, Economics Director at S&amp;P Global Market<br \/>\nIntelligence, said:\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Business activity continued to pick up across the UK<br \/>\nservice economy in February, with growth holding close<br \/>\nto the five-month high seen at the start of 2026. Survey<br \/>\nrespondents commented on rising new business intakes<br \/>\nand improving sales pipelines. This was linked to greater<br \/>\nbusiness and consumer spending, especially in domestic<br \/>\nmarkets. Export orders were relatively subdued,<br \/>\nhowever, and the rate of expansion slipped to a three month low.\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;February data pointed to a solid reduction in<br \/>\nemployment numbers, despite a sustained recovery in<br \/>\nbusiness activity. Job losses reflected ongoing efforts<br \/>\nto focus on boosting productivity and mitigate sharply<br \/>\nrising input costs.\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Higher payroll costs were widely cited as leading to<br \/>\na strong pace of overall input cost inflation. Greater<br \/>\nfood prices and technology costs were also reported in<br \/>\nFebruary. This contributed to another robust increase<br \/>\nin prices charged by service providers, with the pace of<br \/>\ninflation little-changed from January&#8217;s five-month high.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>                            This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prior 54.0 Final Composite PMI 53.7 vs 53.9 prelim Prior 53.7 Key findings: Business activity rises for tenth month running in February New order growth loses momentum Job cuts persist amid pressure&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}