Growth across the UK services sector dropped to a 10-month low, as the emergence of the Omicron variant slowed the UK recovery.
- Services firms struggled with a significant decline in spending on face-to-face consumer services, rising business uncertainty, and disruption due to staff absences as Covid-19 continued to hurt the economy.
- The UK services PMI fell to 53.6 in December, from 58.5 in November. That figure signals the weakest pace of growth since the recovery from lockdown measures started last spring.
- Tim Moore, economics director at IHS Markit stated that December figures signaled a significant loss of momentum for the UK economy as many customer-facing businesses suffered a decline in demand.
- On the brighter side, job creation remained fairly solid, cost pressures eased from November’s record-high and output growth expectations improved marginally.
Meanwhile, the UK economy took a hit last month as Omicron struck hospitality forms and many office staffs attended to their jobs from home.
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Source: IHS Markit
