Political Calculations
Unexpectedly Intriguing!
02 April 2025
An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull and bear anxiously watching a display that says 'DIVIDEND RESULTS' Image generated by Microsoft Copilot Designer

U.S. stock market dividends turned in a mostly negative performance in March 2025.

On the positive side of the ledger, March 2025's 16 dividend decreases came in below the 23 recorded in February 2025. Meanwhile, the year-over-year change in dividend reductions was little changed, increasing by just one over March 2024's total.

However, the change in the number of favorable changes like dividend increases, extra dividends and resumed dividends was decidedly negative. Combined, these three categories added to 141 favorable dividend actions for March 2025, which is 59 less than the 200 reported a year earlier.

This significant year-over-year reduction in favorable dividend actions combines with the small increase in unfavorable dividend changes to give March 2025 an overall score of -60. The following table presents Standard and Poor's dividend metadata for March 2025. It summarizes how the month's dividend data compares in both Month-over-Month (MoM) and Year-Over-Year (YoY) terms with previously reported data:

Dividend Changes in March 2025
   Mar-2025  Feb-2025    MoM  Mar-2024    YoY
Total Declarations 3,585 4,185 -600 5,306 -1,721
Favorable 141 387 -246 200 -59
- Increases 93 286 -193 130 -37
- Special/Extra 47 99 -52 67 -20
- Resumed 1 2 -1 3 -2
Unfavorable 16 23 -7 15 1
- Decreases 16 23 -7 15 1
- Omitted/Passed 0 0 0 ◀▶ 0 0 ◀▶

The following chart shows how these numbers fit in the longer running context of dividend increases and decreases since January 2004.

Number of Public U.S. Firms Increasing or Decreasing Their Dividends Each Month, January 2004 - March 2025

March 2025 represents a continuation of an ongoing negative trend for dividend increases that's been going on since the first quarter of 2023.

Switching to quarterly dividend results, the next chart, groups the previous 15 months worth of dividend increase and decrease data into quarters, covering the last five quarters from 2024-Q1 through 2025-Q1. The chart shows 2025-Q1 was more negative for dividend paying companies in the U.S. stock market than 2024-Q1 was.

Number of U.S. Firms Increasing and Decreasing Dividends by Quarter, 2024-Q1 through 2025-Q1

The silver lining in this data is that the overall number of monthly dividend decreases remains below the threshold that is consistent with recessionary conditions being present in the U.S. economy.

But with a falling number of favorable dividend actions, how long might that continue?

References

Standard and Poor. S&P Market Attributes Web File. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 1 April 2025.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull and bear anxiously watching a display that says 'DIVIDEND RESULTS'".

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01 April 2025
Median Household Income - US Map

Motio Research's initial estimate of U.S. median household income in February 2025 is $82,651. This figure is $278 (0.3%) higher than the firm's initial estimate of median household income of $82,373 in January 2025.

Motio Research's estimates are based on income data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau through its monthly Current Population Survey, which are conducted in the month following the month in question during the week containing the 12th day of the month. The firm adjusts its monthly estimates to account for the effects of seasonality and inflation in its data, presenting its results in the form of an index with the median household income of January 2010 assigned a value of 100. The initial value of the firm's U.S. Real Median Household Income Index for February 2025 is 116.7.

The following screenshot of Motio Research's interactive chart shows how this index has changed from January 2010 through February 2025:

Screenshot of Motio Research U.S. Real Median Household Income Index (MHII) from January 2010 through February 2025

The firm's U.S. Real Median Household Income Index last peaked in September 2024 and has been in a flat-to-lower trend in the months since.

Motio Research also generates household income estimates for the 25th and 75th percentiles in addition to its 50th percentile (median) estimate. The firm reports the households at these positions in the income distribution saw mixed outcomes from their January 2025 levels. Here is what they reported in their 18 March 2025 press release:

The real 25th percentile household income index edged up 0.1% in January, rising to 116.0 (or $41,380). However, lower-quartile incomes have declined by 0.8% over the past three months and remain 0.5% lower than a year ago. The index also remains below its pre-Covid peak of 117.7, underscoring continued challenges in income recovery for lower-income households.

At the upper quartile, the real 75th percentile household income index dipped slightly by 0.1%, settling at 121.0 (or $148,162). Over the past three months, upper-quartile household income has increased by 0.3% and is now 1.4% higher than a year ago. Despite February's small decline, higher-income households continue to maintain a strong position well above their pre-pandemic peak of 117.6.

Motio's press release indicates their estimates suggest "ongoing softness in income growth" for lower-income households during the second month of 2025.

Analyst's Notes

Political Calculations produces estimates of median household income that complement the monthly survey-based estimates produced by Motio Research, which we derive from aggregate income data produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Our initial estimate of median household income in February 2025 based upon our alternate methodology is $82,886, which is $89 (or 0.1%) higher than our initial January 2025 estimate of $82,797. Our median household income estimate is $235 (0.3%) higher than Motio Research's January 2025 estimate.

The latest update to Political Calculations' chart tracking Median Household Income in the 21st Century shows the nominal (red) and inflation-adjusted (blue) trends for median household income in the United States from January 2000 through February 2025. The inflation-adjusted figures are presented in terms of constant February 2025 U.S. dollars and are not seasonally adjusted, unlike the data used to produce Motio Research's Household Income index:

Median Household Income in the 21st Century: Nominal and Real Modeled Estimates, January 2000 to February 2025

Political Calculations' monthly median household income estimates are derived from the Bureau of Economic Analysis' monthly aggregate wage and salary estimates for the U.S. population. For February 2025, this data includes very small downward revisions for November (-0.005%) and December 2024 (-0.066%). The revisions also include a larger downward revision to the aggregate income estimate for January 2025 (-0.223%).

For the latest in our coverage of median household income in the United States, follow this link!

References

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Table 2.6. Personal Income and Its Disposition, Monthly, Personal Income and Outlays, Not Seasonally Adjusted, Monthly, Middle of Month. Population. [Online Database (via Federal Reserve Economic Data)]. Last Updated: 28 March 2025. Accessed: 28 March 2025.

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Table 2.6. Personal Income and Its Disposition, Monthly, Personal Income and Outlays, Not Seasonally Adjusted, Monthly, Middle of Month. Compensation of Employees, Received: Wage and Salary Disbursements. [Online Database (via Federal Reserve Economic Data)]. Last Updated: 28 March 2025. Accessed: 28 March 2025.

U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Price Index, All Urban Consumers - (CPI-U), U.S. City Average, All Items, 1982-84=100. Not seasonally adjusted. [Online Database (via Federal Reserve Economic Data)]. Last Updated: 12 March 2025. Accessed: 12 March 2025.

Image credit: U.S. Census Bureau. We modified the public domain image to make it more generally applicable beyond reporting the median household income from 2022.

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31 March 2025
An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bear looking at a stock chart that's falling. The chart says 'Magnificent Seven'. Image generated with Microsoft Copilot Designer.

The S&P 500 (Index: SPX) fell 1.5% during the final full trading week of March 2025, dropping to 5,580.94 on Friday, 28 March 2025, after dropping 1.97% that day.

By our standards, Friday's trading action doesn't quite qualify as an interesting day for the U.S. stock market, where we define "interesting" as a change in the level of the S&P 500 from the previous day's closing value of 2.00% or more for statistical reasons. Still, it was close to that threshold and came as we're trying to determine whether the U.S. stock market has undergone a regime change since Friday, 21 February 2025.

We're not quite 100% to a full determination, but the data so far is more consistent with the market regime change hypothesis being true than not. The latest update of the alternative futures-based chart is based on the observation that such regime change got underway on 24 February 2025, with the basic trajectory of the S&P 500 following the dividend futures-based model's projection that assumes investors are mostly focusing on the now-current quarter of 2025-Q2 in setting current day stock prices.

Alternative Futures - S&P 500 - 2025Q1 - Standard Model (m=+1.5 from 9 March 2023 through 21 March 2025, m=+4.0 from 24 March 2025) - Snapshot on 28 Mar 2025

As we've kept hammering home, most of the negative change in the S&P 500 since 21 February 2025 has been associated with the deflation of the AI-bubble in stock prices. This deflation has ensnared several companies whose stocks represent the highest weighted components of the S&P 500 index. Collectively known as the "Magnificent Seven", the next chart reveals how they've changed from Friday, 21 February 2025 through Friday, 28 March 2025:

Magnificent Seven stock performance from Friday, 21 February 2025 through Friday, 28 March 2025

Of these seven stocks, only the stock price of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has fallen by a smaller percentage than the overall S&P 500 during this period. Regardless, because of their high weighting within the index, each has made an outsized contribution to the index' decline.

Here are the week's market-moving headlines, many of which from mainstream news outlets are still missing out on what's been the biggest stock market-moving story of the year to date. We've selected some minor headlines to include in this week's edition just to emphasize the extent to which AI-technology associated stocks have dropped.

Monday, 24 March 2025
Tuesday, 25 March 2025
Wednesday, 26 March 2025
Thursday, 27 March 2025
Friday, 28 March 2025

The CME Group's FedWatch Tool's projections are mostly unchanged going into this week. The FedWatch Tool projects the Fed will resume cutting rates with a quarter point rate reduction when Fed meets on 18 June (2025-Q2). The FedWatch tool also anticipates additional quarter point rate cuts at 12-week intervals in the second half of 2025, coinciding with the Fed's FOMC meetings on 18 June (2025-Q2), 17 September (2025-Q3), and 10 December (2025-Q4). The only notable change is there's now a dividend cut projected in mid-2026, which outside investors' typical 0-12 month investment horizon window.

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool's projection of what real GDP growth will be in 2025-Q1 hels steady at -1.8%. However, the GDPNow tool is now providing an alternate model forecast that corrects for the surge in gold imports, which are skewing it's projection. That adjusted forecast indicates -0.5% growth.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bear looking at a stock chart that's falling. The chart says 'Magnificent Seven'."

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28 March 2025

It's always interesting to us to see how other data visualists who draw from the same data sources we do go about developing and presenting their own visualizations of that data.

In October 2024, we featured several visualizations drawn from the Consumer Expenditure Survey about a month after the data had just been published. That data represents how American households spent money in 2023 and our approach was to break that spending down into major categories and explore how that spending has evolved over the past 40 years.

About three months later, Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufield and Sabrina Lam visited the same data source, but chose to focus on just 2023 itself. They used the data to create an infographic showing how much and on what the average American household spent their money on during that year. Here's their visualization:

Since we just covered where the total compensation earned by the average American in December 2024 comes from, we thought this graphic made for a nice companion feature because it shows a good part of what Americans do with their take-home compensation. That assumes the relative share of what Americans spend on each category it shows hasn't much changed from 2023 to 2024.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey showing how Americans spent money in 2024 won't be available until sometime in September 2025, so we won't be able to properly match the spending of American households in 2024 with the average total compensation of an individual American in 2024 until then.

Reference

Dorothy Neufeld and Sabrina Lam. Visualizing How Americans Spend Their Money? [Online article]. Visual Capitalist. 26 January 2025.

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27 March 2025

How much is the average American employee compensated for every hour they work?

Would you believe $47.20 per hour? That's the figure reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for December 2024, which includes all compensation for civilian members of the nation's workforce, including benefits like vacations or retirement benefits and also the taxes paid to provide them with government-mandated benefits, like Social Security and unemployment benefits.

Altogether, we estimate the average American employee receives about 72.5% of their compensation in the form of wages and salaries plus supplemental pay for working overtime and bonuses. The remaining 27.5% of their compensation is in the form of benefits, including health insurance, retirement benefits, paid time off from work, and various government-mandated benefits.

The following chart provides an overview of the costs employers pay per hour for each of these major categories.

U.S. Employers' Average Cost per Hour Worked to Compensate Employees, December 2024

We could have stopped there, but since we had the BLS' underlying data for each subcomponent of these compensation categories, we created an additional chart to illustrate where each cent of the $47.20 per hour the average American receives in compensation comes from:

Assuming 2,080 hours worked per year, the annual income the average worker would report on their income tax return as their base wage and salary income is $67,641, which rises to $71,136 if we count the supplemental pay category as part of their direct annual income.

But including employer-paid benefits boosts the average U.S. wage or salary earner's annual compensation to $98,176. That additional $27,040 is largely not subject to individual income taxes, which is one reason why the portion of an American employee's compensation represented by employer-paid benefits has increased over time.

Reference

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Compensation Survey. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation: Civilian workers. [Excel spreadsheet]. December 2024.

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About Political Calculations

Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:

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