The US services sector is holding up well, data released on Tuesday showed.

That’s not exactly news, but on the off chance you needed additional evidence to support the contention that the biggest part of the world’s largest economy is humming along just fine, ISM’s gauge of services activity printed 56 for October, easily ahead of expectations.

As the figure below shows, the headline print was the best since July of 2022. Consensus was 53.8, so this constituted a meaningful beat.

The final read on S&P Global’s gauge for October was a solid 55.

“The US service sector notched up another strong performance in October, helping offset the current weakness of the manufacturing sector to drive a solid pace of overall economic growth again at the start of the fourth quarter,” S&P Global’s Chris Williamson said, noting that the US economy’s probably still expanding at a rate “in excess of 2%.”

Both the business activity and new orders gauges in the ISM release printed north of 57, and the employment gauge stormed back into expansion territory, rising from 48.1 in September to 53 last month, a 14-month high.

The ISM prices gauge cooled a bit, but at 58.1, it’s still hot to the touch.

The disparity with headline CPI’s pretty wide, but I don’t pretend the figure above is anything other than a “lazy” chart for the sake of it.

Mercifully, the S&P Global release painted a benign picture of selling prices. “Average prices charged for services rose at a sharply reduced rate in October, showing one of the smallest increases seen for over four years, as competition intensified in the services economy,” Williamson remarked.

I don’t think you need a lot of complicated analysis here, and even if you did, nobody cares on Election Day. Bottom line: The US services sector’s doing well, and as long as that’s the case, you’re not going to get a recession in America.

ISM’s Steve Miller flagged political uncertainty as a headwind, but said panelists were relieved that the longshoremen strike “had less of an impact than feared due to its short duration.” Here’s hoping we can say the same thing about the election.