US Services Revenue Rises 3.0% in Q2 2026, Revised Down From Advance

U.S. selected services revenue reached $6,418.7 billion in the second quarter of 2026, an increase of 3.0 percent from the first quarter and 7.6 percent above the second quarter of 2025. The Census Bureau's advance print, published three weeks earlier, put the quarterly gain at 3.1 percent; the complete report — now carrying the full survey response set rather than the partial sample the advance rests on — trims that by a tenth of a point. The revision is small enough to read as confirmation, and the figure underneath it is the largest quarterly increase since October 2021.

Advance-to-Full Revisions

Two figures in this release carry an explicit advance-to-full comparison, and both moved the same distance in the same direction. The first-quarter-to-second-quarter change for selected services total went from the advance estimate of 3.1 percent to 3.0 percent. Finance and insurance went from 4.2 percent to 4.1 percent. A tenth of a point in each case, against a base the advance had already called correctly.

That is the analytically useful result, and it is worth stating plainly rather than burying under the arithmetic: the advance sample got this quarter right. Confirmation of that kind is not a non-event for anyone building GDP estimates on the advance print — it removes a source of uncertainty rather than introducing one.

The rest of the release's revision language is easy to misread. Ten further sector paragraphs revise the fourth-quarter-2025 to first-quarter-2026 change — the prior quarter, not the one this report is about. Those moved in both directions and mostly by a tenth or two. Two are worth naming: utilities' prior-quarter change was cut from 4.8 percent to 4.2 percent, and transportation and warehousing's was raised from 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent. Neither touches the second-quarter print.

The Sector Picture

• Health care and social assistance: $1,147.5 billion, up 3.5 percent on the quarter and 7.4 percent on the year
• Information: $704.4 billion, up 2.7 percent on the quarter and 9.9 percent on the year
• Professional, scientific, and technical services: $816.4 billion, up 1.4 percent on the quarter and 6.4 percent on the year
• Arts, entertainment, and recreation: $116.8 billion, up 3.9 percent on the quarter and 6.8 percent on the year

All four clear the Census Bureau's confidence threshold this quarter. The Bureau marks a change when its 90 percent confidence interval includes zero — insufficient evidence that the actual change differs from zero — and in this release only administrative and support services, educational services, and accommodation carry that mark. Every sector tracked here measurably grew.

Health care is both the largest of the four and the quarter's engine. Its 3.5 percent gain is the largest quarterly increase since October 2023, and it arrives with the tightest sector-level confidence interval in the release at ± 0.2 percent. It also breaks a pattern: health care turned in 0.5 percent in each of the two preceding quarters, making this a 3 percentage point acceleration in a sector that had gone flat.

Information ran the fastest annual pace of the four at 9.9 percent, but its quarterly cadence eased — 2.7 percent against 3.0 percent in the first quarter. Professional, scientific, and technical services was the laggard at 1.4 percent, clearing its ± 1.3 percent band by a hair while improving on the 1.0 percent it posted in the first quarter. Arts, entertainment, and recreation rose 3.9 percent against a wide ± 3.0 percent interval; the reading is noisy, but discretionary leisure spending expanding rather than contracting is the more informative half of it.

Outside the four, the edges of the release carry the larger moves:

• Other services (except public administration): $278.9 billion, up 11.1 percent on the quarter and 12.1 percent on the year
• Transportation and warehousing: $401.8 billion, up 5.1 percent on the quarter and 12.3 percent on the year
• Finance and insurance: $1,973.5 billion, up 4.1 percent on the quarter and 7.6 percent on the year
• Utilities: $219.6 billion, down 1.9 percent on the quarter

Utilities is the only decline in the release that clears its own confidence band, and it follows a 4.2 percent first quarter — a giveback rather than a turn.

What It Means for GDP

The Quarterly Services Survey is the primary source the Bureau of Economic Analysis draws on to build the PCE services component of GDP, and the advance print is what feeds the earliest GDP vintages. This report moves that input by a tenth of a point, downward. That is as close to neutral as a revision gets.

Any GDP estimate built on the advance QSS figure was built on a number this report has essentially left standing. The services side of the revision arithmetic is therefore settled, and settled quietly — a different outcome from the one where a full report forces the Bureau to rebuild a published estimate around a materially different services base.

Composition is where the picture actually improved. The 3.0 percent total is carried by health care — the heaviest sector tracked here, at $1,147.5 billion — rather than by a narrow fast-growing contributor. An aggregate led by its largest component, with every tracked sector clearing its confidence band, is a more durable kind of strength than one resting on a single sector. For the PCE services line, that breadth matters more than the tenth of a point that came off the headline.

The Multi-Quarter Trend

Services growth stepped up sharply. The fourth quarter of 2025 came in at 1.0 percent, the first quarter of 2026 at 1.1 percent on revenue of $6,231.3 billion, and the second quarter at 3.0 percent — a 1.9 percentage point acceleration from the prior quarter, and the largest quarterly increase since October 2021.

The annual figure argues the step-up is real rather than a seasonal artifact: at 7.6 percent year over year, the level has climbed from $6,164.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025 to $6,418.7 billion in two quarters. Both the rate and the level are pointing the same way, which is not always the case when a single quarter jumps.

One caveat sits over all of it. The Census Bureau has flagged that effective with the November 2026 advance release, the seasonally adjusted Selected Services Total will be revised to reflect historical corrections, the results of the 2023 and 2024 Annual Integrated Economic Survey, and new seasonal factors. The quarterly path described here is the current vintage, and a benchmark revision of that scope can reshape it.

The third-quarter 2026 Advance Quarterly Services Report is scheduled for November 19, 2026. The figure to watch is health care's quarterly change. Two quarters at 0.5 percent followed by one at 3.5 percent is either the start of a re-acceleration or a single catch-up quarter, and health care is large enough that the answer determines where the services total goes regardless of what the other sectors do. That same release carries the benchmark revision, so it will also restate the history against which the judgment gets made.