Briefing
The Surprising Resilience of Corporate Profit Margins
Abstract: Public companies' gross margins have held up (and even grown) despite a decade of supply shocks. The median company's gross margin rose about 3 percentage points (or roughly 10 percent), and this isn't just a shift toward high-margin services, as average gross margins still grew more than 10 percent within the five largest industries. Healthy margins suggest that rising input costs aren't squeezing firms into cutting labor costs, which makes gross margin pressure an unlikely cause of the declining labor share over the past decade. Business-facing firms have seen faster margin growth than consumer-facing ones, though margins grew for both.
Access Documents
File(s):
File format is text/html
https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_brief/2026/eb_26-37
Description: Briefing
Authors
Bibliographic Information
Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Part of Series: Richmond Fed Economic Brief
Publication Date: 2026-11-12
Volume: 26
Issue: 37