The richest sliver of American society, a group so small it rounds to zero, now commands 12% of US national income. We’re talking about roughly 19 to 34 households. They’d control more wealth than most countries produce in a year.
Research from economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez puts this figure at three times the concentration seen during the peak of the Gilded Age in 1910, when the equivalent elite held about 4%.
The numbers behind the superlative
The collective wealth of America’s top 0.00001% reached approximately $2.6 trillion by the end of 2024. This group added about $1 trillion in wealth in a single year.
Their share of total US household wealth climbed from 0.1% in 1982, when the group numbered just 11 households, to 1.8% by the end of 2024. That’s an 18x increase in share over roughly four decades.
