{"id":307011,"date":"2025-11-10T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T12:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=307011"},"modified":"2025-11-07T06:27:05","modified_gmt":"2025-11-07T06:27:05","slug":"us-wealthiest-billionaires-got-698-billion-richer-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/11\/us-wealthiest-billionaires-got-698-billion-richer-this-year\/","title":{"rendered":"US Wealthiest Billionaires Got $698 Billion Richer This Year"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The top 10 richest U.S. billionaires took home 833,631x more money than the typical North American home, and inequality could get worse thanks to President Donald Trump\u2019s tax changes, job scarcity, and a looming recession.\u00a0 ALLISON ROBBERT \/ Contributor \/ Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

Trump\u2019s Tax Policy Could Give Them a New Windfall<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4 Nov 2025 <\/em>– While North Americans are pinching their pennies amid SNAP cuts<\/a>, soaring housing costs<\/a>, and mass layoffs<\/a>, the ultra-rich are seeing unprecedented wealth gains<\/a>. In the coming years, we could even have our first trillionaire<\/a>: Elon Musk<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Now, a new report<\/a> from Oxfam has revealed that the 10 richest U.S. billionaires added $698 billion to their net worths in the past year.<\/p>\n

Nearly the entire ultra-rich cohort is made up of tech leaders profiting from the gold rush in tech and AI<\/a>, including Oracle<\/a> cofounder Larry Ellison<\/a>, Amazon<\/a> founder Jeff Bezos<\/a>, Google<\/a> cofounders Larry Page<\/a> and Sergey Brin<\/a>, Meta<\/a> CEO Mark Zuckerberg<\/a>, Nvidia<\/a> CEO Jensen Huang<\/a>, ex-Microsoft<\/a> CEO Steve Ballmer<\/a>, and Dell<\/a> founder Michael Dell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On average, each person on US top 10 rich list gained $69.8 billion over the past year\u2014they made 833,631 times more than what the typical US household takes home.<\/p>\n

While Musk defends his<\/a> eye-watering $1 trillion pay package, the average U.S. household only brought in $83,730 last year, according to<\/a> U.S. Census data.<\/p>\n

In contrast, 40% of US households are \u2018poor,\u2019 Oxfam says<\/h2>\n

While billionaires are getting richer, North Americans are scraping by<\/a> on their measly paychecks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over 40% of the U.S. population\u2014including nearly 50% of children\u2014are considered to be poor or low income, according to the report. And looking at trends within the last few decades, the worsening wealth divide is even more stark. Between 1989 and 2022, a rich U.S. household at the 99th percentile (or top 1%) gained 101 times more wealth than the average home.<\/p>\n

In fact, the wealthiest 0.1% of North Americans today own 12.6% of assets and 24% of the stock market. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of the U.S. owns just 1.1% of the exchange.<\/p>\n

Women and people of color have been hit hardest by mounting inequality; the average male-headed household gained four times as much wealth compared to the average female-led home. The fortunes of white households were bolstered 7.2 times more than the average Black household, and 6.7 times higher than the typical Hispanic\/Latino home. And despite making up one-third of the U.S. population, Black and Hispanic\/Latino households only hold 5.8% of the country\u2019s wealth.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s worse, America\u2019s wealth gap is only expected to grow wider, the report warns, thanks to the Trump administration\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill, job scarcity<\/a>, and an impending recession<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Gilded Age returns: Why US wealth inequality is getting worse<\/h2>\n

History seems to be repeating itself; the wealthiest 0.0001% control a greater share<\/a> of wealth than in the Gilded Age, according to the report. Billionaires have become king<\/a> in America, and the new administration is passing legislation to safeguard their fortunes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump administration risks exponentially accelerating some of the worst trends of the past 45 years,\u201d the Oxfam study notes<\/a>, \u201chaving already overseen in less than one year a massively regressive tax reform, major cuts to the social safety net, and significant rollbacks for worker\u2019s rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Trump passed his One Big Beautiful Bill<\/a> this July, which entails reducing the tax bill of the top 0.1% of earners in the country. By 2027, it\u2019s expected that the statute will shave $311,000 off the tax costs of the ultra-rich, while the poorest Americans\u2014making less than $15,000 annually\u2014will be forced to pay even more in taxes. Among the 10 largest economies in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the U.S. is ranked second-to-last in using its tax and transfer system to fight inequality. In that cohort, US also has the highest rate of relative poverty.<\/p>\n

While US is home to more billionaires than any other country in the world, the average U.S. citizen isn\u2019t getting a slice of the monumental economic success. Moody\u2019s chief economist, Mark Zandi, told Fortune<\/em><\/a> last month that lower-income households are \u201changing on by their fingertips financially.\u201d Cost of living is raging, high-paying job opportunities are scarce, and layoffs are on the rise. To add fuel to the fire, US is descending into a recession; and 22 U.S. states are already<\/a> seeing their economies contract, putting tight finances on the line.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe grip feels more tenuous because no one\u2019s getting hired. You can sustain that for a while, but you can\u2019t sustain that forever. If the layoffs do pick up, that lower-middle-income group is gonna get nailed\u2014and they have no options,\u201d Zandi said<\/a>. \u201cThey have debt: They have auto debt, they have student loan debt, they may, if they\u2019re lucky, have a mortgage, but they\u2019re gonna struggle, and their world is going to descend into recession pretty quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Emma Burleigh is a reporter at <\/em>Fortune, covering success, careers, entrepreneurship, and personal finance. Before joining the Success desk, she co-authored <\/em>Fortune\u2019s CHRO Daily newsletter, extensively covering the workplace and the future of jobs. Emma has also written for publications including the <\/em>Observer and<\/em> The China Project, publishing long-form stories on culture, entertainment, and geopolitics. She has a joint-master\u2019s degree from New York University in Global Journalism and East Asian Studies.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – fortune.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Nov 2025 –\u00a0While North Americans are pinching their pennies amid soaring housing costs and mass layoffs, the ultra-rich are seeing unprecedented wealth gains. In the coming years, we could even have our first trillionaire: Elon Musk.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":307013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,3225,550,3614,2305,610,1624,3530,1213,3226,249,70],"class_list":["post-307011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-billionaires","tag-corruption","tag-disaster-capitalism","tag-elon-musk","tag-inequality","tag-mafia","tag-military-capitalism","tag-super-rich","tag-trillionaires","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307011"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307017,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307011\/revisions\/307017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}