The share of profits earned by non-financial corporations across the European Union fell to 40.1% in 2024, marking a decline of 1.6 percentage points compared with the previous

year. The figure reflects the portion of business value added that goes to capital rather than labour and is a key indicator of how income is distributed within the economy.

A lower profit share can point to shrinking corporate profits or a shift toward more labour-intensive production. Conversely, higher values usually suggest stronger profits or a greater reliance on capital-intensive industries.

Looking back over the past two decades, the profit share has followed a volatile path. It stood at 40.4% in 2004 before peaking at 42.1% in 2007. The global financial crisis triggered a prolonged downturn, pushing the indicator to its lowest level in 20 years at 39.5% in 2012. After that, it recovered unevenly, rising from 40.2% in 2020 to 42.1% in 2021, then easing to 41.9% in 2022 and 41.7% in 2023, before the sharper drop recorded in 2024.

Significant differences remain between EU member states. Ireland recorded by far the highest profit share in 2024 at 74.9%, followed by Malta at 56.4% and Slovakia at 48.9%. Ireland’s unusually high figure is largely explained by the strong presence of foreign-owned multinational corporations, which tend to operate with high capital intensity.

At the other end of the scale, France posted the lowest profit share at 32.2%, with Slovenia at 33.4% and Portugal at 34.5%, highlighting a greater relative share of income going to labour in those economies. Photo by WolfVision GmbH, Wikimedia commons.