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Value of professional services at pre-virus levels

The value of monthly services’ output increased by 8.6% in December when compared with November on a seasonally adjusted basis, new CSO figures show.

And two sectors have returned to pre-crisis levels – professional, scientific and technical activities (+25.1%); and information and communication (+2.9%).

The largest declines in activity recorded since February 2019 were in accommodation and food-service activities (-49.5%), other service activities (-25.9%), transportation and storage (-23.3%), administrative and support-service activities (-11.4%) and wholesale and retail trade (-0.4%). 

December growth

December is the first month that has shown growth since September 2020, following a decline of 4.6% in October, and 2.9% in November.

On an annual basis, services were 0.3% lower in December 2020 compared with December 2019. Overall, the value of services’ output fell by 7.7% in 2020 when compared with 2019.

All sectors showed an increase in output in the month of December, the statistics show.

The largest monthly increase was in accommodation-and-food service activities (+93.1%), albeit from a very low base in November when many establishments were closed.

There were also increases in:

• Other service activities (+29.6%),
• Professional, scientific and technical activities (+23.0%),
• Wholesale and retail trade (+5.5%),
• Administrative and support service activities (+5.4%),
• Information and communication (+4.0%), and
• Transportation and storage (+1.0%).

Accommodation and food hit

Compared with December 2019, activity is still down by almost half in accommodation and food service activities (-49.9%).

The figures for other sectors are, as follows:

• Other service activities (-27.7%),
• Transportation and storage (-21.5%),
• Administrative and support-service activities (-16.7%), and
• Wholesale and retail trade (-0.9%).

The only sectors to show an increase since December 2019 were professional, scientific and technical activities (+36.1%); and information and communication (+9.7%).

Services in December were 3.3% lower than in February 2020, before the current COVID-19 wave began.