Last year, a record 6% of workers in 401(k) plans took a hardship withdrawal. That is up from 4.8% in 2024 and a prepandemic average of about 2%. The median withdrawal was $1,900.
Chicago took the top spot in a ranking of U.S. cities by financial distress. Chicago saw a 30% increase in residents allowed to skip payments due to financial difficulty, and it also ranked near the top for the number of distressed accounts per capita. Houston, Las Vegas, Dallas and Los Angeles rounded out the top five.
While the S&P 500 has traded within a range of just 2.7% in 2026, the average company in the index has moved within a band that is about seven times as much. That ratio is the largest since at least 1994, signaling a market with unusually high divergence in returns between different companies.
Companies in the State Street Software ETF trade at roughly 19 times their next 12 months of earnings, down from a peak of more than 47 times in 2022. Companies in the broad S&P 500, meanwhile, are trading at close to 22 times forward earnings.
Shares of many large private-asset managers peaked around late 2024 or early 2025, following a long surge. Now, after recent sharp price drops, those firms’ shares are each down by at least 30% since the start of 2025.
In 2008, banks originated around 60% of mortgages and serviced about 95% of mortgage balances. As of 2023, banks originated 35% of mortgages and serviced 45% of mortgage balances.
Households’ stock wealth is now equal to almost 300% of their annual disposable income, compared with 200% in 2019.
The number of jobs people quit in December came to 3.2 million, well below the 4.5 million hit in March 2022. The quits rate, which measures quits as a share of employment, was 2%, well short of the 2.3% it averaged in 2019, before the pandemic.
U.S. job openings decreased by 386,000 roles in December, reaching their lowest level since September 2020.
