The March US Services Purchasing Managers' Index conducted by Market came in at 58.0 percent, up from the final February estimate of 56.5.

Here is the opening from the latest press release:

“Business activity in the vast service sector enjoyed a boost from the relaxation of virus-fighting restrictions in March, regaining strong momentum after the Omicroninduced slowdown seen at the start of the year. Demand for services is in fact growing so fast that companies are increasingly struggling to keep pace with customer orders, leading to the largest rise in backlogs of work recorded since the survey began in 2009.

"However, while this suggests that companies have a healthy book of orders to sustain strong output in the coming months, the downside is further upward pressure on prices as demand exceeds supply. With firms' costs inflated by the soaring price of energy, fuel and other raw materials, as well as rising wages, prices charged for services are rising at an unprecedented rate. Consumer price inflation therefore looks likely to accelerate further as we head into the spring." [Press Release]

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

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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.

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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.

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