Super Rich became super wealthy in 2024. And the process is just speeding up.
The 19 wealthiest households, including Titans in industries such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, saw their wealth increase by $1 trillion last year, according to new data released Wednesday.
The benefits of these superbillionaires were more than worth the Swiss economy as a whole; Wall Street Journalcited an analysis by Gabriel Zukman, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley and the Faculty of Economics in Paris.
And the pace at which these ultra-rich households are expanding their country’s share of wealth has increased significantly.
In 1982, the top 0.00001% of Americans controlled 0.1% of the US total wealth. According to Zucman, it took 40 years to increase its share to 1.2% in 2023.
A portion of that pie had jumped to 1.8%, or about $2.6 trillion by the end of 2024. This is the largest year increase to date.
“With this progressive rise, we’ve only recently seen a dramatic acceleration in the rise of stocks in truly super Keldy-owned wealth,” Zukman told the Journal.
The acceleration was boosted by a surge in stock markets last year, and was supported by “Trump Bump” following Donald Trump’s presidential victory in November. Overall, the Broad-based S&P 500 surged 23%, the technology-rich Nasdaq surged 28%, and the Blue-Chip Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 13%.
The number of billionaires is also increasing.
Last year, JPMorgan Chase’s private bank estimates were 199 billion billion from 1,370 in 2021.
The increase in wealth among the wealthiest Americans is far outweighed by all other groups.
According to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by St. Louis’s economist, St. Louis’s top 0.1%, or $46.3 billion worth of households, have increased their fortunes of about $3.4 million a year since 1990. According to an analysis of federal reserve data.
The remainder of the top 1% worth at least $11.2 million grew their fortunes of around $450,000 each year over the same span.
According to the Global Inequality Database, by 2023, the top 1% had increased their U.S. gross wealth share to 34.8%.
Meanwhile, the UK’s top 1% accounts for 21.3% of its wealth. In France, it controlled 27.2%. In Germany, it was 27.6%.
All other asset groups in the US have seen their gross wealth stock shrink over time.
