by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
What a bummer. Services are two-thirds of the economy; as long as they’re firm, the economy will plug along just fine, even as manufacturing stalled.
US service sector activity, driven by new orders and rising employment, expanded strongly in July, according to two measures of the service sector released today: The ISM Services PMI and S&P’s US Services PMI (formerly the Markit Services PMI).
The way these Purchasing Manager Indexes (PMIs) are structured, a value of 50 means no change, a value higher than 50 means growth, and a value below 50 means decline. The higher the value above 50, the faster the growth. The measurement is month-to-month.