Dow Jones
IndexDow Jones shareholder yield: 2.17%
Dow Jones companies returned $532B to shareholders over the last twelve months — $329B buying back their own stock and $203B in dividends. Against their combined $24.47T of market value that is a 1.35% buyback yield and a 0.83% dividend yield: 2.17% of cash returned in total. Buybacks are the larger half, which is why the dividend yield alone understates what owners actually receive.
Cash returned by fiscal year#
Dollars, not yields — a yield series would need each year's market value, and re-rating would then drive the line as much as company behaviour does. Dividends sit on the bottom because they are the sticky leg; the buyback band on top is the one that moves.
| Fiscal year | Buybacks | Dividends | Total returned | Net income | Payout ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | $290B | $194B | $484B | $706B | 68% |
| FY2024 | $253B | $180B | $433B | $570B | 76% |
| FY2023 | $229B | $183B | $412B | $506B | 81% |
| FY2022 | $241B | $163B | $405B | $472B | 86% |
| FY2021 | $198B | $154B | $352B | $478B | 74% |
| FY2020 | $156B | $139B | $296B | $295B | 100% |
| FY2019 | $224B | $147B | $370B | $337B | 110% |
| FY2018 | $239B | $137B | $376B | $318B | 118% |
| FY2017 | $168B | $137B | $305B | $280B | 109% |
| FY2016 | $135B | $119B | $254B | $248B | 102% |
| FY2015 | $133B | $104B | $237B | $237B | 100% |
| FY2014 | $166B | $104B | $269B | $260B | 103% |
Summed over today's members by the calendar year of each company's fiscal year-end, as filed. Payout ratio is buybacks plus dividends over net income — above 100% means members returned more than they earned that year, funded from cash or borrowing. Composition changes as membership does, so the earliest years cover slightly fewer companies.
FAQ
- What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average's shareholder yield?
- About 2.17% — a 1.35% buyback yield plus a 0.83% dividend yield, from 30 members' trailing-twelve-month SEC cash-flow filings against their combined $24.47T market value. Netting off the $4B those companies raised issuing shares takes it to 2.16%.
- Do Dow companies buy back more stock than they pay in dividends?
- Yes, and by a widening margin. In FY2025 members spent $290B on repurchases against $194B in dividends. The exception is a downturn, because buybacks are discretionary and get cut first: in FY2020 they fell from $224B to $156B, roughly level with that year's $139B of dividends, while dividends held at $139B. Boards will suspend a repurchase long before they will cut a payout.
- Why not just look at the dividend yield?
- Because it now describes a minority of the cash. A company repurchasing 3% of its shares has returned cash as surely as one paying a 3% dividend, but only the second shows up in a yield figure — which is why the Dow Jones Industrial Average's 0.83% dividend yield looks so meagre against its own history while total cash returned does not.
Notes & related#
Figures come from members' own SEC cash-flow statements via our EDGAR pipeline (30 of 30 members with a market value), summed and divided by their combined market capitalisation — the cash definition of shareholder yield, which is what index providers publish. Elsewhere on this site we use a different one. Per-company pages and the shareholder yield list report a realized yield — the shares a company actually retired — because cash over market value flatters a business whose stock fell after it spent the money. That objection doesn't carry to an index aggregate, where no single member's re-rating moves the total and per-member share counts are muddied by index turnover and takeovers. Different question, different convention.
Buyback figures are gross repurchases; the “net of issuance” card subtracts cash raised issuing shares, which is not the same as offsetting stock compensation. See also dividend yield and aggregate earnings. Not investment advice.
ChartRow is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC, S&P Global, or Nasdaq, Inc. "S&P 500®" and "Dow Jones®" are registered trademarks of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC; "Nasdaq-100®" is a registered trademark of Nasdaq, Inc. They are used here only to identify the indexes discussed. All index-related figures on this page are independently derived from public sources — SEC filings, Robert Shiller's public dataset, and our own computations — not from any index provider's data feed.