There was bad news for Wall Street's bulls for dividends last month.
May 2025 saw negative developments for dividend paying stocks in the U.S. stock market. Measured year-over-year, the number of firms acting to cut their dividends rose and the number of firms announcing dividend increases fell.
Overall, the single number that summarizes the month's dividend changes is -52. This figure represents the net amount by which a reduced number of companies announcing favorable actions like dividend increases or paying extra (or special) dividend payments to their shareholders added to the reduction in the number of firms that either cut or suspended their dividends when compared against their levels in May 2024.
All the month's favorable and unfavorable dividend actions are listed in the following table, which shows how much they changed since May 2024 (year-over-year) and since April 2025 (month-over-month).
| Dividend Changes in May 2025 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May-2025 | Apr-2025 | MoM | May-2024 | YoY | |
| Total Declarations | 4,886 | 3,632 | 1,254 ▲ | 4,419 | 467 ▲ |
| Favorable | 203 | 159 | 44 ▲ | 245 | -42 ▼ |
| - Increases | 130 | 107 | 23 ▲ | 155 | -25 ▼ |
| - Special/Extra | 72 | 52 | 20 ▲ | 90 | -18 ▼ |
| - Resumed | 1 | 0 | 1 ▲ | 0 | 1 ▲ |
| Unfavorable | 21 | 4 | 17 ▲ | 11 | 10 ▲ |
| - Decreases | 21 | 4 | 17 ▲ | 11 | 10 ▲ |
| - Omitted/Passed | 0 | 0 | 0 ◀▶ | 0 | 0 ◀▶ |
The following chart tracks the monthly counts of dividend increases and decreases from January 2004 through May 2025:
The good news is the number of dividend reducing firms remains well below the threshold that indicates recessionary conditions are present within the U.S. economy.
But the more-than-two-years-old downward trend for dividend increases points to a different kind of continuing stress in the market.
References
Standard and Poor. S&P Market Attributes Web File. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 2 June 2025.
Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bull reading a newspaper with the headline 'Dividend Cuts Up, Dividend Rises Down'".