New Zealand’s services sector result for October remained in contraction, according to the BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Services Index (PSI).
The PSI for October was 46.0 (A PSI reading above 50.0 indicates that the service sector is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining). This was up 0.3 points from September, but activity has varied by only 0.7 points over the last four months, which has kept the sector within a tight band of contractionary results. The October result is also still well below the average of 53.1 over the history of the survey.
BusinessNZ’s CEO, Katherine Rich said that the October result showed mixed results when broken down by sub-index values. While the New Orders/Business Index (48.1) was at its highest level since February 2024, the Activity/Sales Index (44.3) lost some momentum during October. The Employment Index (46.4) recovered some of its fall after a sizeable drop in September.
The proportion of negative comments for October stood at 59.1%, which was up from September at 58.5%, but down on 60.8% in August and 67.0% in both July and June. The cost of living and the general economic climate continued to dominate comments from respondents.
BNZ’s Senior Economist Doug Steel said that “although it is contracting at a much slower pace than it was in June (when the PSI was 41.1), the PSI has been hovering between 45 and 46 over the last four months. The activity outlook for the sector has improved in recent business surveys, but the here and now remains extremely challenging”.
