-Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit
Service industry in Britain, which makes up around 78% of the UK's GDP, continued to expand in July. However, growth slowed down and missed economist estimates, thus indicating that the Europe's third largest economy might have cooled down. Markit/CIPS PMI in July, slipped to 57.4 from 58.5 the month before, and below the market expectations of 58. However, this was the 31st consecutive month of expansion in the sector. Nonetheless, the July figure was weaker than the trend seen in the first six months of the year, when in the first half of 2015 service companies recorded growth of 57.6 and 58.2, respectively. The main subsector behind the expansion in service sector was the financial services, which recorded fastest growth since 2013. Meanwhile, the rest of subsectors indicated the slowest growth in almost three years. In addition to that, 18% of British services companies stated that they saw an expansion in the workforce in July, compared with approximately 9% that decreased the number of workers.
Moreover, construction PMI data, released earlier in the week, also disappointed economists as growth slowed down to 57.1 in July versus 58.1 in June. These two important PMI figures raise questions the UK's economic recovery.
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