The richest Americans have gotten much richer, much faster.
In 2024, the wealthiest households in the US experienced an unprecedented surge in their financial holdings, adding approximately $1 trillion to their collective net worth – a sum which exceeds the value of Switzerland’s entire economy.
Over the past 40 years, the share of total US wealth held by the richest 0.00001 percent of Americans – which is about 19 households – grew from 0.1 percent in 1982 to 1.2 percent in 2023, according to the Wall Street Journal.
However, in just one year – 2024 – the once slow-growing share jumped to 1.8 percent, or about $2.6 trillion, totaling the biggest one-year increase ever recorded, according to economist Gabriel Zucman.
At the end of 2024, the total US household wealth stood at about $148 trillion, according to Zucman, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics.
Yet, as wealth has grown for everyone since 1990, the ultra-rich have seen their wealth grow much faster than anyone else, Zucman said.
‘You see this gradual rise and then, very recently, dramatic acceleration in the rise of the share of wealth owned by the truly super wealthy,’ Zucman told the WSJ.
Wealth managers say the stock market experienced a huge boom in 2024, which helped the richest people get even richer by building on gains they had made the year before.
Elon Musk, 53, is currently the world’s richest person, with a net worth estimated at $386.5 billion as of May 1, 2025. His wealth primarily comes from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX
Musk’s mansion in Austin, Texas, a purchase reportedly worth a whopping $35 million
Gabriel Zucman, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics
‘The super wealthy are not saving money – they own assets that benefit from inflation. They own businesses, real estate, tech platforms, and equity (stock) in asset classes that are growing,’ Grant Cardone, an American businessman and New York Times bestselling author, told the DailyMail.com.
‘When asset values go up, their wealth explodes. When governments print money their assets grow.
‘And they are highly concentrated in their investments not diversified like Main Street America has been indoctrinated to do.’
The two booming years were notably ‘the best consecutive years’ for the S&P 500 in the last quarter-century, according to the WSJ.
But, even with such handsome profits year-after-year, there is risk involved.
After President Donald Trump unleashed a global trade war, the markets saw a steep decline, revealing just how quickly the wealth of the super-rich can fluctuate.
Because a lot of the the uber-wealthy’s money is typically invested in stocks, their net worth can change by billions of dollars in a single day, all depending on the status of the market.
The people at the very top – the 0.00001 percent – are worth at least $45 billion each, according to Zucman’s research.
The exclusive group includes high-profile figures such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Stephen Schwarzman.
The exclusive group includes high-profile figures such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Stephen Schwarzman
Jeff Bezos, 61, currently the third-richest person in the world and founder and executive chairman of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, is estimated to be worth around $230 billion
Bezos splashed out $90 million on a third mansion in Miami’s exclusive Indian Creek Island – bringing his total investment in the famed ‘Billionaire Bunker’ to an eye-watering $237 million
Some researchers even refer to them as ‘super billionaires.’
As the wealth of the rich keeps growing, more people are becoming billionaires, especially in the US. JPMorgan Chase says the US had about 2,000 billionaires last year, up from 1,400 in 2021.
While another group, Altrata, counted 1,050 billionaires in 2023, with a combined wealth of nearly $5 trillion.
‘The wealthy are playing offense in a system designed by capital – and the middle class is still playing defense with outdated rules. The game’s changed. It’s time the rest of America catches up,’ Cardone said.
In 2023, the richest one percent of people in the US owned about 35 percent of all the wealth in the country, according to the World Inequality Database.
Grant Cardone, an American businessman and New York Times bestselling author
By comparison, in other countries, the top one percent held much lesser shares like the UK where the top-earners came in at 21 percent, in France the top one percent held 27.2 percent, and in Germany, 27.6 percent, the WSJ reported.
Since 1990, people who were already wealthy have gotten even richer, and they’ve been gaining wealth faster than everyone else.
So while the top one percent have increased their share of the nation’s wealth, the rest of the population has seen their share shrink.
‘You’ll see the wealth gap will continue to grow wider faster over the next decade because the system rewards people who make big bets on a few things, not those who simply work hard to earn money and then attempt to save it,’ Cardone added.
Within that top one percent, the super-rich – called the top 0.1 percent – have done even better. This group, about 133,000 households, each worth at least $46 million, gained an average of $3.4 million every year since 1990.
The rest of the top 1 percent, around 1.2 million households worth at least $11 million, saw their wealth grow by $450,000 a year, on average, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Steven Fazzari, an economist at Washington University in St. Louis.
