After hitting a 12-year high in October, sentiment in the services sector of the US economy pulled back a little more than expected in November. While economists were expecting November’s ISM Non-Manufacturing report to pull back from 60.1 to 59.0, the actual reading came in even weaker at 57.4. Taking this morning’s report and factoring in Thursday’s report on the Manufacturing sector, the combined ISM for November came in at 57.5 compared to 59.9 in October.

In a vacuum, the commentary section of this month’s report shows pretty widespread optimism, but if you’ve been reading these sections of the report on a regular basis, things aren’t quite as overwhelmingly positive as they have been in recent months. 

Finally, the internals of this month’s report were, like the headline reading, weak on a m/m basis. As shown in the table below, the only components that showed a m/m increase in November were Inventories and Import Orders. To the downside, the biggest declines were in Inventory Sentiment, New Orders, and Supplier Deliveries. On a y/u basis, however, things still look very positive with Inventory Sentiment and Import Orders the only components that are down versus last November.