Research from Ezra, the leading provider of digital coaching, has revealed which service industries have best negotiated the COVID-19 landscape and which are still feeling the pinch.
The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic
It is no secret that the UK economy, like the majority of the world’s economies, has struggled at the hands of the devastating coronavirus pandemic.
With local and national lockdowns governing company policy, the majority of sectors have been forced to remote work, or even deemed unable to work during this time period.
This has meant a huge surge in inefficiency, lower revenues, and an increasing amount of workers depending on government support.
With governments forced to make decisions in a fully unprecedented situation, we will not know for many years to come the extent to which countries have acted “correctly” or not.
UK Service Industry
Ezra analysed ONS data on sector performance based on the movement in the volume of output across the UK service industry since the start of the pandemic in January 2020.
The research shows that as a whole, growth across the UK services sector has averaged 1.2% per month despite the problematic landscape posed by the pandemic.
Strongest Performing Industries
The education services industry has seen the strongest performance, with the average rate of growth hitting 1.6% per month.
Transportation and storage has also performed well growing by 1.4% per month on average, with automotive wholesale and retail repair (1.3%) and human health and social work (1.2%) also seeing an average rate of growth in excess of one per cent per month.
Less Successful Sectors
However, not all service industry sectors have performed as well with the ‘activities of households as employers’ sector seeing the largest decline, down -1.9% per month on average.
The information and communication sector has also seen an average monthly decline of -0.5%, with services classed as ‘other service activities’ declining by -0.2% per month on average.
Founder of Ezra, Nick Goldberg, commented:
“The services sector has arguably been one of the hardest hit during the pandemic but it’s interesting to see how this impact differs across each sub-sector.
For example, an early reopening of the property industry and the additional boost of a stamp duty holiday has led to a property market boom, yet the average monthly growth of the sector trails accommodation and food services which has arguably endured one of the hardest periods of uncertainty.”
