Richest 1% of Americans now hold nearly a third of the country’s total wealth

The richest 1% of Americans now hold nearly a third of the country's total wealth — 31.9% as of the end of 2025, according to Federal Reserve data released this month. That is the largest percentage recorded since the Fed began tracking these numbers in 1989, and likely the highest since the end of World War II.

The milestone was underscored by a single event: the SpaceX IPO last week, which made Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire and added roughly $400 billion to his personal net worth in three trading days. But Musk's windfall is a symptom, not the disease. The concentration of wealth has been accelerating since 2022, driven by a stock market boom, rising real estate values, and policy choices that have disproportionately benefited asset holders over wage earners.

**The Numbers: A 40-Year Arc**

In 1990, the top 1% held 22.5% of national wealth. By 2020, that figure had risen to roughly 30%. The jump to 31.9% in just five years represents an acceleration that has alarmed economists across the ideological spectrum.

Today's top 1% consists of approximately 1.4 million households, each with a net worth of at least $12 million, holding a combined $55.9 trillion in wealth. The bottom 50% — 67.7 million households — each have less than $264,000 in net worth.

French economist Thomas Piketty, whose work on wealth inequality has been influential in policy circles, has estimated that the top 1% held nearly half of U.S. wealth in 1928 and 1929, just before the Great Depression. Their share declined during the post-war period of high marginal tax rates, when corporations invested profits into expansion and wages rather than executive compensation. The current trajectory, Piketty warns, is pointing back toward those pre-Depression levels.

"There's nothing natural about this — it's all due to policies," Piketty wrote in an email to Stateline. "If the super-rich capture the state and pay little tax, then it's easy to accumulate a lot, but history suggests that politics can revert quite quickly."

**What's Driving It**

The primary engine of wealth concentration is the stock market. Since 2020, the S&P 500 has roughly doubled, and the beneficiaries of that rally are overwhelmingly concentrated at the top. White Americans, who make up 57% of the population, own 82% of financial assets. Black and Hispanic Americans, who together represent 24% of the population, hold less than 7% of assets.

Rising real estate prices have compounded the effect, particularly for longtime homeowners in high-appreciation markets. But for younger generations and non-asset-holders, the same trends are catastrophic. Baby Boomers hold nearly half of all U.S. wealth. Millennials and Gen X hold the lion's share of liabilities — mortgages, student loans, consumer debt — that drag down their net worth.

Policy has reinforced these dynamics. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed by President Trump last summer extended deep corporate tax cuts from his first term and introduced new provisions that disproportionately benefit high-income households. According to a June 1 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the combined effects of the tariffs (since struck down by the Supreme Court) and the tax law will benefit the top 10% of households most and hurt 70% of households between now and 2034.

Chuck Marr, the center's vice president for federal tax policy, was blunt: "Trump's whole policy has really leaned into increasing this disparity. You've got AI coming and globalization has shifted income and wealth upward, and instead of pushing back against that, Trump and others have leaned into it."

Even conservative economists acknowledge the trend, though they frame it differently. Kyle Pomerleau of the American Enterprise Institute noted that the U.S. tax system remains "highly progressive" in that high earners fund benefits for low-income residents. But he also conceded that the system "raises a lot less money" than peer nations — only Ireland collects less government revenue as a share of GDP among the 20 wealthiest countries.

**The Inflation Divide**

The Federal Reserve's Beige Book, released June 3, documented the lived reality behind the statistics. Higher-income households remain "resilient and less sensitive to price increases," while middle-income households are "squeezing more life out of every dollar before deciding to spend it." Low-income consumers show "greater financial strain."

A Kansas City Fed roundtable captured the split vividly: one high-end restaurant chain executive said his company could raise prices at will and keep expanding, limited only by a shortage of upscale chefs. Meanwhile, mid-range hotels, bars, and restaurants are struggling to fill seats.

As Heritage Foundation chief economist E.J. Antoni put it: "Wall Street got rich while Main Street got inflation."

**States Push Back**

At least a dozen states have proposed new taxes targeting the wealthiest residents, including Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Virginia. In California, advocates gathered enough signatures for a November ballot initiative that would impose a one-time tax on billionaires — potentially generating $101 billion from the state's $2.3 trillion in billionaire wealth.

The migration response has been mixed. At least 12 billionaires left California this year. But 23 new billionaires were created in the state during the same period, and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has vowed to stay despite a potential $8 billion tax bill.

**What This Means For You**

If you're not in the top 1%, the data confirms what you already feel: the system is weighted against you. Wealth concentration isn't just an abstract statistic — it means higher housing costs, fewer economic opportunities, and a political system increasingly responsive to the interests of a narrow elite.

But here's the thing Piketty gets right: this isn't natural or inevitable. It's the result of specific policy choices — tax rates, corporate governance rules, antitrust enforcement, labor protections. Those choices can be reversed. The Gilded Age was followed by the Progressive Era. The 1920s were followed by the New Deal. History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.

For investors, the lesson is clear: asset ownership remains the primary path to wealth in America. If you can invest — even small amounts consistently over time — you benefit from the same dynamics driving concentration at the top. If you can't, you're on the wrong side of the widest wealth gap in modern American history. That's not a moral judgment. It's a math problem that demands a policy solution.