LONDON, July 3 (Reuters) – Activity in Britain’s dominant services sector contracted for a second month running in June and by the most since early 2023 \u200cas the fallout from the Iran war continued to weigh on companies, a \u200cclosely watched survey showed on Friday. <\/p>\n
The S&P Global Purchasing Managers’ Index for the services sector in June fell to \u200b48.8 from May’s 49.3, representing the second fall in a row in activity and the weakest since January 2023. <\/p>\n
Friday’s reading was slightly stronger than a preliminary flash estimate of 48.7. A reading below 50 signals contraction. <\/p>\n
Overall new work contracted at the fastest pace since November 2022, \u200cwith companies citing concerns about who \u2060would replace Prime Minister Keir Starmer and their fiscal policies, as well as global inflationary pressures. <\/p>\n
The survey added to signs of a slowdown \u2060ahead of former Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham’s likely installation as prime minister. <\/p>\n
“June data confirmed a clear loss of momentum for the UK economy during the second quarter of 2026, following a \u200bpositive start \u200bto the year,” Tim Moore, economics director at \u200bS&P Global Market Intelligence, said. <\/p>\n
“Strong cost \u200cpressures, lacklustre demand and business uncertainties arising from the Middle East conflict were the most prominent themes highlighted by service sector firms in June.” <\/p>\n
There were signs that inflation pressures eased slightly, although they remained strong. The PMI’s gauge of input cost inflation fell in June to its weakest since March. Businesses said higher input costs were partly due to rising \u200csalaries and transport costs. <\/p>\n
While firms continued to pass \u200bon their costs to customers, the increase was at \u200bthe softest pace since February. <\/p>\n
The composite \u200bPMI, which includes Wednesday’s manufacturing data, was revised down to 49.3 from \u200ca preliminary reading of 49.4, the weakest \u200bsince April 2025 and \u200bdown from 49.7 in May. <\/p>\n
S&P said business sentiment about the coming 12 months was the second-lowest since April 2025, but firms turned slightly more optimistic on hopes \u200bof a peace deal between \u200cthe United States and Iran and investment in artificial intelligence. <\/p>\n
Hiring contracted for the \u200b21st consecutive month, the longest continuous period of job shedding since February \u200b2010. <\/p>\n
(Reporting by Suban Abdulla; Editing by Toby Chopra) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON, July 3 (Reuters) – Activity in Britain’s dominant services sector contracted for a second month running in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,730,24,2934,34208,34209],"class_list":["post-75687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-britain","tag-inflation-pressures","tag-iran","tag-prime-minister-keir-starmer","tag-sp-global-purchasing-managers","tag-services-sector"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116855262612179988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}