5. Rolling three-month growth in the services sector was 0.4% in February 2019

Figure 4: Wholesale and retail trade have performed better than the services sector as a whole for the past year, while motor trade has underperformed Rolling three-month index, January to March 2018 until December 2018 to February 2019, base period: January to March 2018 Source: Office for National Statistics – GDP monthly estimate Download this chart Figure 4: Wholesale and retail trade have performed better than the services sector as a whole for the past year, while motor trade has underperformed Image .csv .xls

Over the past year, wholesale and retail trade output has grown faster than the services sector as a whole. However, growth in motor trade output has remained persistently below the services sector, despite recovering somewhat in October and November 2018. There are a number of reasons for the weakening in the motor trade industry, including the introduction of emissions testing in September 2018.

The services sector grew by 0.1% in the month of February 2019, with broad-based growth across its subsectors. The largest positive contributor to monthly growth was legal activities, which recovered from a fall in January. This was offset by a decline in advertising in February.

Rolling three-month growth in the services sector was 0.4% in February 2019. The largest contributor to growth was computer programming, which has performed strongly in recent months.