The services sector ─ which brings together activities such as transport, tourism, restaurants, beauty salons and information technology ─ closed 2025 with growth of 2.8%, despite a decline of 0.4% from November to December. The result represents the fifth consecutive year of increase.
The data is part of the Monthly Service Surveyreleased this Thursday (12) by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in Rio de Janeiro.
With December’s performance, the sector is 0.4% below the highest level ever recorded, in November 2025, and 19.6% above the pre-covid-19 pandemic level (February 2020).
>> Follow the channel Brazil Agency on WhatsApp
Moving Average
The IBGE survey collects data on 166 types of services. The quarterly moving average, which indicates the sector’s most recent behavior trend, had zero variation (0%) compared to the three-month period ending in November.
2025 behavior
The year 2025 was predominantly marked by positive results when comparing consecutive months. Only January (-0.3%) and December were in negative territory.
Last year’s balance had the lowest performance of the five consecutive years of expansion in services:
- 2020: -7.8%
- 2021: 10.9%
- 2022: 8.3%
- 2023: 2.9%
- 2024: 3.1%
- 2025: 2.8%
The fall of 2020 is explained by the effects of the covid-19 pandemic, which isolated people and closed businesses.
Altogether, the last five years have seen an expansion of 31%. In the period, the positive highlights were information technology services (84.4%), technical-professional services (59.8%) and land transport (43.5%).
Influence of the year
Throughout 2025, services were in the positive field in four of the five activities surveyed.
- information and communication services: 5.5%
- professional, administrative and complementary services: +2.6%
- transport, services auxiliary to transport and mail: +2.3%
- services providedother services: -0.5%
Of the 166 services surveyed, 53.6% ended the year with a high. Among the segments with the greatest influence are portals, content providers and other information services on the internet; air passenger transport; road freight; advertising; and development and licensing of computer programs.
For the research manager, Rodrigo Lobo, the negative result in December does not necessarily indicate a change in the sector’s trend.
“It is not possible to infer that there is a reversal of trajectory. We have services operating at great strength”, he says.
