February Markit Services PMI: Sharp Upturn

The February US Services Purchasing Managers' Index conducted by Markit came in at 56.5 percent, down from the final January estimate of 51.2.

Here is the opening from the latest press release:

“US service sector companies reported a strong rebound in business activity during February as virus containment measures were eased to the loosest since November. The data add to evidence from manufacturing surveys that the Omicron wave appears to have had only a modest and short-lived impact on the economy. “February’s PMI surveys are broadly consistent with GDP rising at an annualised rate of 3.5%, representing a substantial improvement on the 0.9% rate signalled by the January surveys. First quarter GDP growth is therefore currently averaging just over 2%. [Press Release]

Here is a snapshot of the series since mid-2012.

Here is an overlay with the equivalent PMI survey conducted by the Institute for Supply Management, which they refer to as "Non-Manufacturing" (see our full article on this series here). Over its history, the ISM metric has been significantly the more volatile of the two.

The next chart uses a three-month moving average of the two rather volatile series to facilitate our understanding of the current trend. Since early in 2016, the ISM metric has shown stronger growth than the Markit counterpart.