Corporate Profits After Tax
Corporate profits after tax (without inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments) is the National Income & Product Accounts measure of the total dollar profits earned by US corporations after corporate taxes. It is the bottom-line aggregate that S&P 500 earnings track over time, published quarterly by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Profits YoY %
- After-tax profits
- $3.95T
Next release: Aug 26, 2026
Latest reading
As of Q1 2026, Corporate Profits (Profits YoY %) stands at 18.4% — up from 2.8% the prior reading, 75.5 pp below the Q4 2009 record of 93.9%. The year-over-year growth rate is the cyclical signal: accelerating profit growth supports equity valuations and capex, while year-over-year contractions have accompanied every earnings recession and most bear markets. Because it is the broadest profit measure, it leads and confirms the corporate earnings cycle that drives the stock market. Series history runs from 1948 to present.
Sources, methodology & freshnessLast updated 2026-08-21 · Open ↓Close ↑
Full history
Year-over-year %
Quarter-over-quarter %
The latest-quarter change — the higher-frequency momentum read that turns before the year-over-year rate at inflection points.
Dollar level
Total US after-tax corporate profits in dollars (seasonally adjusted annual rate). The level trends higher across decades — the year-over-year view above is where the earnings cycle lives.
Profits as % of GDP
After-tax profits as a share of nominal GDP — the economy-wide profit margin at the center of the valuation debate. The post-1947 average is about 7½%; the 2000 peak ran near 5½%, and recent quarters sit around 12%+, an all-time-high neighborhood. Whether that share mean-reverts or is structurally higher is the whole argument between the Buffett indicator and the market-cap-to-profits multiple. Quarterly nominal GDP comes from the same dataset the Buffett indicator uses; a few pre-1952 quarters have only annual GDP and render as gaps.
Profits ÷ SPY
Total after-tax profits ($B) divided by the month-end SPY price — how much economy-wide profit stands behind each index point. FALLING means the market is outrunning the profits underneath it. The series’ all-time low was October 2000 — the dot-com peak — and its high came in 2010, when profits had recovered before prices did. Not an earnings yield (numerator is all US corporations, not S&P 500 earnings); read the direction and the extremes; the level itself carries little meaning.
Profits as % of M2
After-tax profits relative to the M2 money supply — profitability normalized for the amount of money in the economy, which strips the monetary-growth trend out of the dollar level across decades. The 1959+ average is about 13%; the range runs from ~6½% (early-1990s trough) to ~22% (mid-2000s peak).
Methodology & data
Corporate Profits is sourced from BEA via the Federal Reserve's FRED service (BEA via FRED (CP), quarterly, seasonally adjusted annual rate). We pull the complete history, chart it on a quarterly basis, overlay SPY for context, and generate a dated plain-English reading from the latest release — with no smoothing or adjustment beyond what the chart legend states.
Every reading is stamped with its release date, last updated 2026-08-21. Maintained and reviewed by Yuriy Matso; see our methodology for the standards every series on the site is held to.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Corporate Profits After Tax?
Corporate profits after tax (without inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments) is the National Income & Product Accounts measure of the total dollar profits earned by US corporations after corporate taxes. It is the bottom-line aggregate that S&P 500 earnings track over time, published quarterly by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
How do you read Corporate Profits?
The year-over-year growth rate is the cyclical signal: accelerating profit growth supports equity valuations and capex, while year-over-year contractions have accompanied every earnings recession and most bear markets. Because it is the broadest profit measure, it leads and confirms the corporate earnings cycle that drives the stock market.
Where does the Corporate Profits data come from?
BEA via FRED (CP), quarterly, seasonally adjusted annual rate. We chart the full history and publish a dated, plain-English reading with every release; the raw series is downloadable as CSV at /data/indicators/corporate-profits.csv.
How often is Corporate Profits updated?
Corporate Profits is a quarterly series from BEA, refreshed here as soon as a new release posts to FRED.
Profits YoY %
- After-tax profits
- $3.95T
Next release: Aug 26, 2026