The last of this week’s top-tier US macro releases sent mixed messages about the largest part of the world’s biggest economy.

The marquee gauge of US services sector activity beat on the headline, but measures of input price pressure and hiring nodded to stagflationary undercurrents.

At 50.8, ISM services managed to get back above the demarcation line which separates expansion from contraction, but as the figure below reminds you, we’re not exactly gangbusters here.

The final read on S&P Global’s services gauge for June, also released on Thursday, was 52.9, decent but down from the flash print.

Running quickly through the ISM subindexes, business activity and new orders both improved smartly in June from May, with the latter rising almost 5ppt from 46.4 to 51.3. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the employment index tumbled into contraction territory. 47.2 there was the fourth sub-50 reading in five months.

The prices gauge printed 67.5, down marginally versus May’s stratospheric reading, but still uncomfortably high.

Tariff mentions in the respondent anecdotes were fewer this month, but panelists lamented “general” and “significant” uncertainty tied to trade frictions and geopolitical tension. “The most common topic among survey panelists continued to be concerns about impacts related to tariffs,” ISM’s Steve Miller remarked.

Commenting on S&P Global’s survey, chief business economist Chris Williamson said that despite “weak demand and intense competition, the overall rate of prices charged inflation for services remains the second-highest for over two years thanks to widely-reported tariff-related cost increases.” That, he went on, “will likely contribute to higher consumer price inflation in the near-term.”