February 2025's jobs data showed little change for U.S. teenagers.

Overall, the seasonally-adjusted number of employed teens from Age 16 through 19 ticked up from January 2025, with 5,792,000 counted as having jobs. That's up from the August 2024 low of 5,390,000, but is still down from the May 2024 peak of 5,861,000.

Virtually all of that gain is found among older teens, Age 18 and 19. This portion of the teen population contributed a seasonally-adjusted 3,801,000 workers to the ranks of the employed in February 2025. This figure is the highest in years for this portion of the employed teen demographic.

The story changes however when we look at the trend for younger teens, Age 16 and 17. Representing the most marginal members of the entire U.S. labor force, younger teens saw their employment numbers peak at 2,357,000 in December 2022. Since then jobs held by this demographic have slid, primarily during 2024. February 2025 recording a seasonally-adjusted figure of 1,994,000, which was up some 5,000 from January 2025's level.

These numbers are captured in the following chart, which tracks U.S. teen employment from January 2021 through February 2025.

As a percentage of the teen population, the share of employed teens remained below their recent peaks in February 2025. For all working teens Age 16-19, February 2025's 32.4% employment-to-population ratio remains below the peak of 34.0% recorded in August 2022. For older teens, the peak of 45.9% in December 2024 is much more recent, with February 2025's level coming in at 45.6%.

Once again however, the story is different for younger teens. The share of working teens Age 16-17 peaked at 25.6% in April 2022. In February 2025, that figure is 20.9%. The next chart tracks the U.S. teen employment to population ratio from January 2021 through February 2025.

The months ahead may be rough going for teens with jobs and teens seeking jobs, especially younger teens if their nearly two-year long downward trend continues. We thought we'd end this month's analysis of the teen job market with WYTV's video discussing how to prepare your teenager for their first job:

But that doesn't answer the question of who hires teens. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' web site is a surprising poor resource for that kind of information, but we did find another resource that may be more useful. Hireteen has a curated list of companies that hire teens for specific job openings and also offers a teen job search.

Teens are, by definition, the most marginal members of the U.S. work force, having almost by definition the least amount of education, skills, training, and work experience of all age-based demographic groups. We pay attention to the job situation for U.S. teens because it can be a harbinger of things to come for the entire U.S. job market.

References

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Force Statistics (Current Population Survey - CPS). [Online Database]. Accessed: 7 March 2025.

Image credit: Wanted ad on OpenClipArt. Public domain image.

The S&P 500 (Index: SPX) dropped 3.1% week over week, closing at 5,770.20 on Friday, 7 March 2025.

Much of the week's headlines tried to connect U.S. tariffs to the market downswing, but that misses a bigger story that's developing. The Artificial Intelligence balloon may be beginning to pop.

You have look at the week's second-tier market-moving headlines to get that part of the story. Many of the biggest drops were among the stocks of companies that had been riding high on the AI wave. And for what it's worth, AI-leader Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) dropped well below the $3 trillion capitalization mark during the past week. Since the beginning of the year, NVDA has lost $1 trillion of its market capitalization.

Despite that loss, NVDA is still the third-largest company within the S&P 500. As such, what's going on with it and other AI-related stocks is enough to pull the S&P 500 lower. The latest update of the alternative futures chart shows the trajectory of the S&P 500 is running below the projected trajectory associated with investors focusing their attention on the upcoming future quarter of 2025-Q2.

That situation suggests the negative change in fortune for the AI sector of the stock market may be prompting a change in market regime. It's still too early to make that determination for sure, but it's a potential to which we're paying close attention behind the scenes.

Here are the week's market moving headlines:

Monday, 3 March 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil slides to three-month low as OPEC brings production cuts back online starting April 1
• Trump says Canada, Mexico tariffs to take effect on Tuesday; stocks tumble
• Fed minions say economy still growing, think recent data looks risky:
• Fed's Musalem expects continued economic growth, but sees risks in recent data
• Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
• China February manufacturing hits 3-month high, but US tariff war clouds outlook
• China's Feb second-hand home prices narrows for seventh straight month, report says
• ECB minions’ rate cuts getting more likely in Eurozone as EU economy drags, may "stumble" into stimulus:
• Euro zone inflation ticks lower in boost to ECB rate cut bets
• ECB may fear stumbling into stimulus
• Nasdaq plunges more than 2%; S&P, Dow also drop as fears over Trump's tariff plans sink in
• Nvidia sinks, chips tumble amid China fears, Trump tariffs

Tuesday, 4 March 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Trade wars erupt as Trump hits Canada, Mexico and China with steep tariffs
• Goldman Sachs CEO: Trump wants to 'level the playing field' with tariffs, US recession has 'small, but not zero' chance
• Trump alerts American farmers: get ready for external tariffs April 2
• China hits US agriculture, says won't be bullied by fresh Trump tariffs
• Which U.S. agricultural products did China hit with tariffs?
• China to impose extra tariffs of 10%-15% on various US farm products
• Oil down on OPEC+ output increase, tariffs start and US pause on Ukraine aid
• Fed minions worry about tariffs and inflation they failed to fix after four years:
• Fed's Williams: Tariffs are inflation risk, rate policy in good place
• Bigger stimulus developing in China:
• China ramps up stimulus to guard economy from changes 'unseen in a century'
• Dow, S&P end lower by 1%, Nasdaq declines as Trump tariffs stoke trade war worries

Wednesday, 5 March 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• Oil settles down more than 2% after US crude stocks build, OPEC+ hike, US tariffs
• Oil falls as OPEC+ plans to raise output, U.S. tariffs hammer sentiment
• US factory orders rebound in January on commercial aircraft
• Trump will delay some auto tariffs after Detroit Three push
• BOJ minions thinking about what's on their balance sheet and hiking Japan's interest rates:
• BOJ has no immediate plan to sell ETF holdings, deputy governor says
• BOJ vows to keep raising rates despite Trump tariff risks
• ECB minions see lack of growth developing in Eurozone, Germany to try to spend its way out of funk:
• Euro zone economy treads water again in February, PMI shows
• Exclusive: How the ECB dodged a payment disaster in 10 hours of tech meltdown
• German parties agree historic debt overhaul to revamp military and economy
• Spending U-turn puts Germany back in Europe's driving seat
• Nasdaq, S&P, and Dow closed out the day on top as Trump delays auto tariffs
• Wall Street gains as markets eye easing of trade tensions

Thursday, 6 March 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• US trade deficit hits record high in January on imports surge
• Fed minions don't want to cut rates too soon, start noticing well-developed problems with U.S. economy:
• Fed's Waller, leaning against March cut, sees easings later in year
• Fed's Harker says warning signs emerging for US economy
• Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
• China's imports tumble as demand skids, trade war heats up
• China's January-February exports, imports weaker than expected
• More words than deeds from China on consumption keep deflation in play
• ECB minions cut interest rates again to prop up Eurozone economy:
• ECB cuts rates for sixth time in face of economic upheaval
• ECB cuts rates again but risk of April pause growing
• Nasdaq ends down 2%, S&P slides in tech- and tariff-led rout before U.S. jobs report
• Nasdaq-100 plunges; see which 10 names are struggling the most
• Wall Street sells off as tariff concerns mount, Nasdaq confirms correction

Friday, 7 March 2025

• Signs and portents for the U.S. economy:
• US Treasury's Bessent says economy may slow in shift away from public spending
• Bidenomics Hangover Worsens: Subprime Auto Loan Delinquencies Hit Record High In January
• Trump delays tariffs for goods under Mexico, Canada trade deal
• Oil up, but off highs as Trump warns new Russia sanctions possible
• US estimates it will take $20 billion and years to refill oil reserve
• Fed minions say they're in no rush to cut rates again, are expected to cut rates again in June 2025:
• Fed expected to cut rates in June as jobs data raises potential red flags
• Fed Chair Powell signals possible tweaks to 'dot plot' rate-path forecasts
• Powell says tariffs could feed inflation, Fed must wait to determine the impact
• Fed should be careful, deliberate with interest rate policy, Daly says
• Fed's Kugler says rate policy likely on hold for some time
• Fed may need to stay patient on rates until summer, Bostic signals
• Fed's Bowman signals she may pay more attention to job market in policy debates
• Fed's Williams: Data points to stable inflation expectations
• Bigger trouble, stimulus developing in China:
• China to boost food imports from Latin America, Europe as US trade war escalates
• JapanGov minion says Japan doesn’t need to worry about deflation anymore:
• Japan ready to declare end to deflation, economy minister says
• Japan's largest union group sees biggest wage hike demand in over 30 years
• Not as bad trouble developing in Eurozone:
• Euro zone economy grew faster than initially thought in Q4
• Stocks end higher as Powell soothes economic worries, but post sharp weekly loss
• Equal weight S&P 500 outperforms in 2025 as market-cap weighted index declines
• Nvidia loses $1T market cap since hitting record high earlier this year

The CME Group's 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 now anticipates rate cuts at 6-12-week intervals in the second half of 2025, with quarter point rate cuts forecast for 30 July (2025-Q3), and 29 October (2025-Q4).

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool's projection of what real GDP growth will be in the 2025-Q1 declined from last week's -1.5% annualized growth rate to -2.4%. The GDPNow estimate is believed to be sending a false signal given very high imports of gold to the U.S. (originating from Canada, Switzerland, and surprisingly, Hong Kong), which have shown up as imports in trade data, but which have not yet been updated in inventory data tracked by the GDPNow tool. Forecasts of GDP in 2025-Q1 will be revised higher after accounting for the imported gold rush.

Image credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bear about to pop a balloon that says 'AI' with a dart".

How many living people are there residing within the United States who are Age 100 or older? How many 50 year olds are there? How many haven't yet seen their first birthday?

The U.S. Census Bureau's Population Division provides annual estimates that make it possible to answer these questions. For 2023, the most recent year for which the Census Bureau has published its resident population estimates by single year of age, the answers to these questions are, in order:

• There were 83,732 people living in the U.S. Age 100 or older.
• There were 3,904,908 people who were Age 50.
• There were 3,648,654 people under Age 1.

We've built the following chart to visualize the answers to these questions and to show how many people are there living in the U.S. of each age in between.

We pulled this data shortly after Elon Musk published a table from a Social Security Administration database indicating over 20 million "living" Americans Age 100 or older. Which is quite a bit more than the 83,732 the Census Bureau estimates there were in 2023.

The million dollar question, or possibly the billion dollar question, is how many checks did Social Security pay out to people living in the U.S. whose Social Security numbers are recorded in this database who are Age 100 or older in 2023? If that number is reasonably close to 83,732, there's probably no real problem here other than sloppy and incomplete record-keeping by the Social Security Administration. But if they sent out significantly more retirement benefit checks than that number to people their database says are Age 100 or older, then there's a major scandal brewing. In that case, there's a very good chance those are improper payments being made and the people receiving the checks probably aren't the people the Social Security Administration thinks they are.

No matter what, the Social Security Administration will have some serious housekeeping to do. If they're lucky, it will only just involve cleaning up their database.

Reference

U.S. Census Bureau, Population Division. Annual Estimates of the Resident Population by Single Year of Age and Sex for the United States: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2023 (NC-EST2023-SYASEXN). [Excel Spreadsheet]. June 2024.

The final month of President Biden's 48 months in office saw a surge in the relative unaffordability of new homes.

The monthly mortgage payment for the median new home purchased in the United States would consume 42.9% of the monthly income earned by the typical U.S. household, up from December 2024's revised figure of 38.7%. January 2025 represents the 34th consecutive month in which the monthly mortgage payment for the median new home purchased in the United States exceeded 36% of the median household's pre-tax income, the upper threshold of household income that mortgage lenders use to determine whether they will lend to a household that has no other debt.

The latest update of our chart tracks the changing relative affordability of the typical new home sold in the U.S. is for the typical American household with respect to the mortgage lending industry's key affordability thresholds from January 2000 through January 2025.

The relative unaffordability of new homes was driven up by two factors in January 2025. First, the initial estimate of the median price of new homes sold jumped to $446,300, more than $30,000 higher than December 2024's median price. Second, the average mortgage rate for a conventional 30-year fixed rate mortgage averaged 6.96% in January 2025, up from December 2024's average of 6.65%.

The affordability crisis for new homes has its origin in the high inflation that was unleashed by the Biden-Harris administration's policies in March 2021. Although it rose slowly at first, the cost of monthly mortgage payment began to skyrocket after December 2021. As a percentage of median household income, the monthly mortgage payment for a new home climbed above the key 36% threshold of relative affordability in April 2022. The relative affordability of new homes has remained above this level for 34 consecutive months.

References

U.S. Census Bureau. New Residential Sales Historical Data. Houses Sold. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 26 February 2025. 

U.S. Census Bureau. New Residential Sales Historical Data. Median and Average Sale Price of Houses Sold. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 26 February 2025. 

Freddie Mac. 30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgages Since 1971. [Online Database]. Accessed 3 March 2025. Note: Starting from December 2022, the estimated monthly mortgage rate is taken as the average of weekly 30-year conventional mortgage rates recorded during the calendar month.

Image Credit: House keys on hand photo by Maria Ziegler on Unsplash .

After January 2025's good start, February 2025's dividends were mildly disappointing, as Wall Street's bear took away some of the dividend increases investors had hoped to catch.

Leaving that picture behind, dividends did take a mildly bearish turn in February 2025. Investors looking for an increase in the number of companies increasing their dividends in February 2025 got them, but they got fewer than what they did a year earlier.

On the other hand, the number of firms announcing they would pay an extra, or special, dividend to their shareholders increased over the number that did in February 2024, but not by enough to offset the net reduction in the number of favorable dividend changes reported during the month.

Meanwhile, the number of dividend decreases ticked up by two year-over-year, making February 2025's unfavorable dividend changes more unfavorable.

Tallying all the month's positive and negative dividend changes from February 2024's values puts it squarely in the negative column. February 2025's magic dividend number, the single number that simply describes how good the month was for the dividend paying companies of the U.S. stock market, is -11.

All the month's favorable and unfavorable year-over-year changes in dividends are listed and totaled in the following table, which also provides the month-over-month numbers and changes.

The following chart visualizes the monthly counts of dividend increases and decreases from January 2004 through February 2025. It shows the trend for dividend paying companies that's been moving downward since 2023 remains in place:

We anticipate the now two-year-old downward trend will continue to assert itself next month. But we'll be happy to be wrong if that's not the case.

References

Standard and Poor. S&P Market Attributes Web File. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 3 March 2025.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: "An editorial cartoon of a Wall Street bear catching a salmon in a stream that has the words 'DIVIDEND INCREASES' written on it. Downstream, several investors look disappointed".