New Zealand BusinessNZ Performance of Services Index rose from 52.2 to 55.2 in May. Activity/sales rose sharply from 53.3 to 59.6. But employment dropped from 51.0 to 48.5. New orders/business rose from 55.2 to 62.0. Stocks/inventories ticked down from 55.0 to 54.6. Supplier deliveries rose from 40.5 to 45.0.
BNZ Senior Economist Doug Steel said that “while the improvement was far from universal across components, reflecting many ongoing challenges across segments of the service sector, the overall outcome was the first above average result since the outbreak of Delta in August last year.”
