Corporate profits were already at historic highs. They shot even higher in Q1.

US business profits are booming no matter how you measure it, with strength in US corporate balance sheets hovering above historic norms for more than a decade.

New Commerce Department data released Thursday showed that total corporate profits in the first quarter of 2026 totaled $4.42 trillion on an annualized basis, a jump from $4.35 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Even through more measured lenses, these are outsized margins coming from America's C-suites.

Corporate profits, on an after-tax basis, represent 12.4% of US gross domestic product, the highest reading since the second quarter of 2021, when profits peaked as the COVID pandemic ebbed. It also marks the second-highest quarterly reading ever in the data, which goes back to 1947.

Compared against a closely linked measure of US gross domestic income, the total income earned by residents and businesses, corporate profits are even healthier, with a ratio of 12.2%, according to Axios, the highest figure since the early 1950s.

No matter how you slice it, corporate profits in 2026 are soaring higher from what were already historically high levels as a variety of factors — from the AI boom to improved efficiency — ha

Fuente original: Yahoo Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/article/corporate-profits-were-already-at-historic-highs-they-shot-even-higher-in-q1-180022338.html)