PMI for services in February expands the fastest in one year; touches 55.3 March 03, 2021 Still, employment dropped Services hit fast lane in February as Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) raced to 55.3 as against 52.8 of January. However, this did not translate into good news on the job front as employment declined from the third month in a row. This is the fifth straight month of expansion. The service sector is the largest contributor to GDP with around 55 per cent share. The latest reading of PMI pointed to the sharpest rate of expansion in output in one year, says IHS Markit, the economic research agency. It is the agency which prepares the index based on compilation of responses from questionnaires sent to a panel of around 400 services sector companies. A diffusion index is calculated for each survey variable. The indices vary between 0 and 100, with a reading above 50 indicating an overall increase compared to the previous month, and below 50 an overall decrease.