U.S. Services Revenue Rises 0.8% in Q4 2025, Up 6.7% Year-Over-Year

The Census Bureau's full Quarterly Services Survey for Q4 2025 confirms that U.S. selected services total revenue reached $6.16 trillion, rising 0.8 percent from the third quarter — matching the advance estimate without revision. Year-over-year, total services revenue was up 6.7 percent from Q4 2024, sustaining a pace of expansion that has held well above the pre-pandemic norm. The finalized data, incorporating complete survey responses, reduces uncertainty for GDP trackers and largely validates the services picture embedded in the BEA's Second Estimate of Q4 GDP.

Advance-to-Full Revisions: A Clean Confirmation

The most analytically significant finding in this full report is what did not change. The headline quarter-over-quarter growth rate of 0.8 percent was not revised from the advance estimate — a clean confirmation that the BEA's preliminary services input was accurate. For most major sectors, the picture is similarly stable:

• Finance and insurance: Q4 QoQ growth held at 1.3 percent, unrevised from the advance.
• Information: The Q2-to-Q3 2025 change was also unrevised at 0.9 percent.
• Arts, entertainment, and recreation: The Q2-to-Q3 2025 change was unrevised at 0.8 percent.

Where revisions did occur, they were minor.

• Transportation and warehousing saw its Q2-to-Q3 2025 growth rate revised from 2.7 percent to 2.4 percent — a 0.3-percentage-point downward adjustment that is at the threshold of materiality but does not change the directional story.
• Accommodation was revised more notably for the prior period: the Q2-to-Q3 2025 change moved from -0.3 percent to +0.7 percent, a full percentage point swing that suggests the lodging sector's mid-year trajectory was stronger than initially reported.
• Health care's Q2-to-Q3 2025 growth was trimmed by 0.1 percentage point to 2.9 percent — a negligible adjustment.
• Professional and technical services saw a similarly minor 0.1-point trim for the same period, to 3.4 percent.

A notable procedural caveat appears in the General Information section: the Census Bureau flagged that upcoming benchmarking — which would incorporate historical corrections, new seasonal factors, and results of the 2023 and 2024 Annual Integrated Economic Survey — has been delayed due to a recent lapse in federal funding. This means the current figures carry more than the usual revision uncertainty ahead of the next benchmark release.

Sector Picture: Tech Leads, Healthcare Cools, Business Services Stalls

The four key sectors present a mixed but coherent picture of a services economy still expanding, though with notable divergences in momentum.

Health care and social assistance, the largest single sector at $1.1 trillion, posted a 0.5 percent QoQ gain — a meaningful deceleration from the 2.9 percent pace recorded in Q3. The sector is up 8.2 percent year-over-year, reflecting sustained structural demand, but the quarterly step-down is the weakest print in several quarters and will likely reduce healthcare's contribution to PCE Services in the BEA's upcoming estimates.

Information was the standout performer, rising 2.2 percent quarter-over-quarter to $663.3 billion, up 7.9 percent year-over-year. Within the sector, software publishers gained 3.0 percent and data processing and hosting services climbed 3.3 percent — both consistent with continued enterprise cloud and AI-infrastructure investment. This acceleration from Q3's 0.9 percent pace signals that tech demand re-accelerated into year-end.

Professional, scientific, and technical services eked out a 0.4 percent gain to $796.6 billion, following a strong 3.4 percent surge in Q3. The deceleration is sharp, though the sector remains 5.9 percent above year-ago levels. Within the category,

• management consulting rose 2.5 percent
• and legal services gained 2.3 percent,
• but computer systems design was essentially flat at -0.1 percent
• and scientific research and development fell 3.3 percent — the latter a notable drag that may reflect project-timing volatility rather than a structural pullback.

Arts, entertainment, and recreation rose 1.3 percent to $111.8 billion, up 3.4 percent year-over-year. As the most discretionary of the four tracked sectors, a positive print here — even a modest one — suggests consumer leisure budgets remained intact through the fourth quarter. The sector's confidence interval is wide (±3.0 percent), so the directional signal carries more weight than the precise magnitude.

GDP Implications: Second Estimate Validated, Third Estimate Likely Stable

The full QSS report's primary value for macro forecasters lies in its role as the BEA's key input for the PCE Services component of GDP. Given that the headline total services QoQ growth rate was unrevised at 0.8 percent, and the sector-level revisions were largely minor, the data strongly suggests the BEA's Second Estimate of Q4 2025 GDP — which incorporated the Advance QSS — was built on a sound foundation.

The one area to watch for the Third Estimate is the accommodation sector's upward prior-period revision (Q2-to-Q3 revised from -0.3 percent to +0.7 percent). If the BEA's Q3 GDP figures did not fully capture this improvement, a modest upward nudge to Q3 PCE Services — and by extension real GDP — could appear in the next comprehensive revision cycle. However, given the benchmark delay noted above, any such adjustment may not be incorporated until the delayed release is scheduled.

The deceleration in healthcare from 2.9 percent in Q3 to 0.5 percent in Q4 is the most consequential single-sector development for GDP accounting. Healthcare is the largest component of PCE Services, and a slowdown of this magnitude will weigh on the services contribution to Q4 real GDP growth, partially offsetting the strength in information and utilities.

Multi-Quarter Trend: Services Growth Settling Below Its 2021–2022 Peak

Stepping back across the last four quarters, the trajectory of total services revenue growth is one of gradual normalization. The QoQ growth sequence reads: 1.1 percent in Q1 2025, 2.2 percent in Q2, 2.4 percent in Q3, and now 0.8 percent in Q4. The Q3 surge now looks like the high-water mark for the current expansion cycle, with Q4 pulling back toward the 0.8–1.5 percent range that characterized the pre-pandemic norm in 2018–2019.

Year-over-year, total services revenue is up 6.7 percent — still robust in nominal terms, though this figure is not adjusted for price changes. The services sector has now more than doubled in revenue since the 2013 baseline, growing from roughly $3.0 trillion to $6.2 trillion. The question for 2026 is whether the Q4 deceleration reflects a one-quarter pause — perhaps driven by the sharp drop in other services (down 4.2 percent QoQ) and administrative services (down 1.1 percent) — or the beginning of a more sustained moderation.

The next read on this question arrives May 21, 2026, when the Advance QSS for Q1 2026 is released. The key data point to watch will be whether professional and technical services can sustain positive momentum after Q4's near-stall, and whether healthcare rebounds from its weakest quarterly print in over a year — both of which would be necessary to maintain aggregate services growth above 1 percent.