The July US Services Purchasing Managers’ Index conducted by S&P Global came in at 47.3 percent, down from the final June estimate of 52.7 and in contraction territory.
“US economic conditions worsened markedly in July, with business activity falling across both the manufacturing and service sectors. Excluding pandemic lockdown months, the overall fall in output was the largest recorded since the global financial crisis and signals a strong likelihood that the economy will contract for a third consecutive quarter.
“Tightening financial conditions mean the financial services sector is leading the downturn, with a further steep rise in interest rates from the FOMC since the survey data were collected likely to intensify the downturn. Higher interest rates, alongside the ongoing surge in inflation, have meanwhile spilled over to the consumer sector, meaning the surge in household spending on goods and activities such as travel, tourism, hospitality and recreation seen in the spring has now moved into reverse as household spending is diverted to essentials.
Although employment continued to rise in July, the rate of job creation has also slowed sharply since the spring and looks set to weaken further in the coming months as firms cut operating capacity in line with weakening demand.
“The flip side of deterioration in demand is a welcome alleviation of price pressures, which hint at a peaking of inflation.” [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. 
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Editor’s Note: The summary bullets for this article were chosen by Seeking Alpha editors.
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